Expert Comments

Carlo Rossi asks Christgau about politics, dropping a book title:

Carlo Rossi: I'm more curious what you think of The
Superclass (presumably David Rothkopf's book, subtitle: The
Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making). I've noticed
the book, but never looked at it closely.

I've been reading Thomas Geoghegan's Were You Born in the
Wrong Continent? -- basically, a love letter to the German
economic system (works councils, co-determination, labor unions),
which makes the point that by sharing power and responsibility
Germany has become what the US was 40-50 years ago: a net creditor
nation with the world's largest trade surplus. Seems to me to be
a system that works for virtually everyone, yet everywhere in
Europe there are propagandists hectoring on how Europe is falling
behind and needs to become more capital-friendly. That sounds
like it could be the work of a self-appointed superclass.

Rossi wrote back as Carlos Rose:

Interesting Tom,

I think that Superclass is a very important book, and its sort of a
work of gradualism. Its interesting because its not a conspiracy
theory tome, its simply an exploration of a new sort of power that
came to exist around the turn of the century.

Rothkopf, as an insider and someone who lives in the same world as
these elites, has written a book that is careful not to step on their
toes. With that being said, he is still one of the only people to talk
about the Superclass openly, which makes his work valuable. And if you
look carefully in the book, you can find a lot of disturbing
facts.

For example, it is revealed that: if an individual or entity has
access to thugs with weapons, or nuclear arms (or another source of
violence) they can effectively control city councils or regional
governments. This empowers terrorists and criminals by legitimizing
them and giving them a seat at the table.

Rothkopf argues that the Superclass has subverted democracy around
the world by giving billionaires and other influential people more
power than heads of state.

That book you mentioned sounds interesting. People power is a
beautiful thing, and empowering these unions and such seems like an
effective check/balance. Could you provide me a link that would tell
me more about the propagandists that are hectoring Europe? It sounds
interesting . . .

I quoted the last part, then added:

Geohegan's Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? has
numerous quotes, mostly citing Financial Times and Wall
Street Journal. Also cites Larry Summers at Davos and elsewhere
arguing that Germany should make fewer things and get more into
services like advanced countries like the US. These things come and go
in waves, but right now the big European governments (UK, France,
Germany, Italy) all have right or right-center governments that are
trying to be capital-friendly even if they are less committed to
destroying the welfare state than the Republicans (or even the
Democrats) are here. Part of why they're in power is that previous
left-center governments (at least in UK and Germany) got too wrapped
up in their own efforts to appease business interests, but there must
be a lot of effort to make right-wing parties seem plausible,
especially given how clearly the recession was tied to their
programs.

The Void at the End of the Tunnel

Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, better known as Poly Styrene, died
yesterday, at 53, breast cancer. Coincidentally, yesterday was the
US release date of her new album, Generation Indigo -- only
her second, thirty years after one called Translucence in
1980, reissued on CD in 1990, long out of print, mostly forgotten.
She's much better known as the lead singer of X-Ray Spex, a British
punk group which cut a remarkable series of singles in 1977-78,
culminating in the album Germ Free Adolescents, then broke
up. I was so taken by them that I bought the singles as they came
out:

"Oh Bondage Up Yours!" / "I Am a Cliché"

"The Day the World Turned Day-Glo!" / "I Am a Poseur"

"Identity" / "Let's Submerge"

"Germ Free Adolescents" / "Age"

"Highly Imflammable" / "Warrior in Woolworths"

The first single was pure punk rage, the screamed vocals rammed
home by Lora Logic's crude sax. But each song added new facets and
refinements until the album's title song emerged as their perfect
generational anthem. I never saw them. I doubt they ever played the
US. The albums were import only until Sanctuary mopped up all they
could find in 2002 -- the album, outtakes and demos, a trashy live
tape (released separately in 1991 as Live at the Roxy) --
for the 2-CD The Anthology. I reviewed it in Recycled Goods
[link]:

X-Ray Spex: The Anthology (1977-78, Sanctuary/Castle,
2 CD). Aside from the Yankees' August blowout of the
Red Sox, my fondest memory of 1978 was snapping up X-Ray Spex as they
unveiled themselves single-by-single: "Oh Bondage Up Yours!," "The Day
the World Turned Day-Glo," "Identity," "Germ Free Adolescents." They
evolved from howling punk yelp to shrink-wrapped plastic anthem, from "I'm
a poseur and I don't care/I like to make people stare" to "I wanna be
instamatic/I wanna be a frozen pea/I wanna be dehydrated/in a consumer
society." Poly Styrene declaimed, Lora Logic wailed on sax, and the
blokes banged on things. Johnny Rotten was an aesthete compared to them.
This collects everything they ever did: their one studio album expanded
to 16 cuts, 10 more rough mixes of the same, and the trashy sounding live
tape from their second gig. Maybe you had to be there to love every
moment of it, but I do. A

Turns out they found a bit more for the 2006 2-CD Let's Submerge:
The Anthology (also Sanctuary/Castle). The band regrouped for a
gig in 1991, then cut a second album in 1995 (Conscious Consumer)
that I haven't heard. They regrouped for another gig in 2008, released
as Live @ the Roadhouse London 2008 (Year Zero) -- mostly old
songs ("I Can't Do Anything" and "I Live Off You" especially smashing)
with four songs from the 1995 album and one ("Bloody War") I'm not
aware of them doing before.

When I heard she had something new in the works I tracked down a
promo video -- something I almost never bother with -- and thought it
pretty good. I've noted several reviews for Generation Indigo
in the British press. Looked for it on Rhapsody a couple of times,
but couldn't find it (or any trace of her old album). I thought the
US release was last week, but April 25 turns out to be the date.
Robert Christgau rushed out an
Expert Witness A- grade. Same day another Christgau piece appeared on
NPR. When I read this I was confused: I had heard about her breast
cancer, and for some reason thought it had already killed her. I tried
researching it, and came up with conflicting evidence, including a line
in her
Wikipedia
entry that said she had died. That line was later removed, then
as more info became available the page was cleaned up. That was
yesterday; today it all came clear, or at least clearer. Christgau
wound up writing a third piece, a more formal obituary at
NPR. The Expert Witness comment thread (click above) has some
real-time confusion and commentary on all this. I had some things
to say, but felt it better to do so here.

By coincidence, two other legendary women singers died the same
day -- not so well known to the general public, but legends in their
own niches. Phoebe Snow had a string of records 1974-78, a couple
more later. She started off as a singer-songwriter, but switched to
mostly covers on her third album and emerged as a fine interpretive
singer -- "Teach Me Tonight" may be her finest song. But her albums
were never that consistent -- her hit "Poetry Man" always seemed
sappy, and her arrangements often detracted from her voice. Christgau
recommends her 1982 Best Of and her 2001 Very Best Of
but I don't find they help much -- 1976's It Looks Like Snow
was her peak, and I'd rather have "In My Girlish Days" than half of
the tracks on either best-of. She strikes me as a remarkable singer
without a fully worthy album. (Although I've yet to check out her
2008 Live album.)

The other singer who died yesterday was easily the greatest of
the bunch: Hazel Dickens (though bluegrass-phobe Christgau only
graded one of her records). She was another coal miner's daughter,
from Mercer County, West Virginia. In 1968-70 she was in the Strange
Creek Singers with Mike Seeger and Alice Gerard. She kept working
with Gerard on a series of confusingly titled albums -- Hazel
& Alice from 1973 (Rounder) is the pick hit, but they're
all remarkable. From my ratings database:

I don't think there's much else to choose from -- I'm missing a 1987
Rounder compilation, A Few Old Memories, which recycles some of
the above -- but I'm also not seeing any of these still in print. That's
a real travesty -- evidence of nothing less than the left being snuffed
out in American culture. She also had a couple movie roles -- notably
in John Sayles' coal miner strike movie, Matewan.

We like to think we live in a world where progress is cumulative,
but one way it is not is when people die, in which case we lose both
all that they managed to learn in their lives, and all they could
have done with that knowledge, experience, and wisdom. So at times
like this we sink into a darker world. That may be fate, but it's
all the sadder when we see so many of these works are buried even
before the bodies. All the more reason to look forward to hearing
the new Poly Styrene album.

PS: Looks like X-Ray Spex played CBGB's in March 1978, so
I got that wrong. I was in NY at the time, but missed that show.

PPS: Herb Levy wrote in to ask, "but do you really want to
claim that Phoebe Snow was less well known than Poly Styrene?" No.
I see the confusing line, but didn't mean it as relative to Poly
Styrene; rather, that Snow and Dickens (actually like Poly Styrene)
had niche, not mass, followings. Even so, in the mid/late 1970s,
Snow had a pretty sizable following, but I imagine it shrunk quite
a bit over the years. When I wrote this piece I wasn't aware of the
story that Snow gave up her music career to care for her daughter,
who was born with brain damage and died at 31 a few years ago. I've
known other people who did the same -- none famous, of course --
so I'm sympathetic but not overly impressed. Actually seems like
a normal thing to do.

Expert Comments

Samethingbackwards came up with a long list of Christgau duds that
he still liked.

Looking at stb's list, I was surprised that the only record
I have warm feelings for was Lou Reed's Berlin -- I think it
was the first thing I had heard by Reed, and I fell for it real
hard. I do recall several people making fun of me over that (but not
Bob; he asked me to review Metal Machine Music for the
Voice). Also looked at Bob's grade C list, and again only found
Berlin, though I have Donna Summer's Live & More at
B+ (I suspect the CD sustains the mood better than the 2LP, even if
you have to listen to "MacArthur Park"), and The Troggs at B
(sometimes I'm soft on dimwits). Not sure about Hot Rats -- as
best I recall it's the only Zappa album I've heard and not hated, but
that shouldn't count for much. Of course, a lot of albums on both
lists I didn't bother with.

Music Week

The Tubby Hayes Quintet: Late Spot at Scott's (1962
[2006], Verve): Live set at Ronnie Scott's, home base for England's
foremost tenor saxophonist of his brief heyday (d. 1973 at 38); an
energetic hard bop quintet, with underrated Jimmy Deuchar on trumpet
and better known Gordon Beck on piano, does some interesting things
on the ballad "Angel Eyes" then breaks loose, especially on the
burner "Yeah!"
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Jazz Prospecting (JCG #27, Part 2)

Not much to report. Haven't heard back from the new Village Voice
editor on my draft column. Presumably that means no more than that
she's busy -- I've grown accustomed to working in a JIT world, one
that's never more than a few blips from sinking into oblivion. I've
been way down too, so the state of jazz (or for that matter my career
as a jazz critic) hasn't been a very high priority.

Jim Black/Trevor Dunn/Oscar Noriega/Chris Speed: Endangered
Blood (2010 [2011], Skirl): Oversized packaging, roughly the
size of a DVD box, which makes it inconvenient for filing. Not clear
if Endangered Blood is deemed a group title, but the four artists are
more usefully listed on the front cover. Drums, bass, alto sax/bass
clarinet, and tenor sax respectively. One cover, Monk's "Epistrophy";
everything else is credited to Speed, so it must be alphabetical order
governing the credits. The faster the rhythm propels them, the more
interesting this gets -- "Tacos and Oscars" is the standout track.
B+(***)

Nate Wooley Quintet: (Put Your) Hands Together (2010
[2011], Clean Feed): Trumpet player, not a lot under his own name but
a couple dozen side credits since 2002. Group spread out with Josh
Sinton on bass clarinet, Matt Moran on vibes, Eivind Opsvik bass, and
Harris Eisenstadt drums. Not much chemistry between the horns, and
the vibes seem like an afterthought. "Elsa" has an appealing Monkish
jerikness to it.
B

Arrive: "There Was . . ." (2008 [2011], Clean Feed):
Chicago group: Aram Shelton (alto sax), Jason Adasiewicz (vibes),
Jason Roebke (bass), Tim Daisy (drums). Same group under Shelton's
name released Arrive in 2005 (recorded 2001, so they go
back quite a ways). Good saxophonist, fast, inventive, would have
been a slick bebopper in the day; adds a little more now. Vibes add
a little fluff.
B+(**)

Júlio Resende Trio: You Taste Like a Song (2010
[2011], Clean Feed): Portuguese pianist. Two previous albums were
HMs, lifted by bravura saxophone performances. This one is just
piano trio, which also does the trick. Two covers: one I don't
recognize from Radiohead, one I do from Monk.
B+(***)

Agogic (2010 [2011], Tables and Chairs): I filed
this eponymous group album under trumpeter Cuong Vu, but on second
thought Andrew D'Angelo (alto sax, bass clarinet) is, as I should
have expected, the more forceful leader. Squaring off the quartet
are Luke Bergman on electric bass and Evan Woodle on drums. The
two-horn jousts are pretty exciting although they sometimes come
unfrayed under the heat of battle. The two-horn unison dirge makes
a powerful sound as well.
B+(***)

Mark O'Leary/Peter Friis-Nielsen/Stefan Pasborg: Střj
(2008 [2011], Ayler): Guitar-bass-drums, respectively. O'Leary is a
guitarist from Ireland, has over a dozen albums since 2005 (although
recording dates go back to 2000). I've heard very few of these, and
don't have a good sense of what he's up to. The sound of the guitar
seems unnaturally constrained, muffled even on stretches where the
moves are dense and muscular; in comparison, Pasborg's drums are
always sharp and clear.
B+(*)

Flow Trio: Set Theory: Live at the Stone (2009 [2011],
Ayler): Louie Belogenis (tenor/soprano sax), Joe Morris (bass), Charles
Downs (drums). Pretty basic avant sax trio. Belogenis has appeared on
a couple dozen records since 1993, mostly in groups like this one. He
makes playing tenor sax a study in struggle, wrenching each note in
turn from the device. Title track runs 29:31. Other two 17:23 and 6:56,
the latter turning to soprano where he is pleasantly asured.
B+(**)

Hubert Nuss: The Book of Colours (2008 [2010], Pirouet):
Pianist, b. 1964 in Germany (Neckarsulm, near Stuttgart -- interesting
to compare the bare bones English and extraordinary German Wikipedia
pages on Neckarsulm). Fourth trio album since 1998, with John Goldsby
(bass) and John Riley (drums). Rather quiet and contained.
B+(*)

Bill O'Connell: Rhapsody in Blue (2009 [2010],
Challenge): Pianist, b. 1953 in New York, got a rep for Latin jazz
working for Mongo Santamaria. AMG lists 7 records since 1978. Mostly
originals, the title bit from Gershwin, "Bye Bye Blackbird"; has
a few Latin flourishes, especially Richie Flores percussion on two
tracks, but is mostly straightforward, ebullient mainstream jazz,
with Steve Slagle on alto and soprano sax.
B+(*)

Curtis Woodbury (2010, Jazz Hang): Plays violin
and tenor sax, impressive on both but plays much more violin here.
Eponymous debut album. Don't have any bio, but album was recorded
in Utah, seems to be where he's from. Group includes another
Woodbury, Brian, on trombone, plus piano, bass, and drums. Two
originals, six covers -- Scott Joplin, Astor Piazzolla, Sonny
Stitt, Michel Camilo, Dave Holland, "You Are My Sunshine." Nice
range.
B+(**)

These are some even quicker notes based on downloading or streaming
records. I don't have the packaging here, don't have the official hype,
often don't have much information to go on. I have a couple of extra
rules here: everything gets reviewed/graded in one shot (sometimes with
a second play), even when I'm still guessing on a grade; the records go
into my flush file (i.e., no Jazz CG entry, unless I make an exception
for an obvious dud). If/when I get an actual copy I'll reconsider the
record.

Dave Douglas: United Front: Brass Ecstasy at Newport
(2010 [2011], Greenleaf Music): Same four brass plus drums lineup as
on Douglas's Spirit Moves (2009): trumpet (Douglas), trombone
(Luis Bonilla), French horn (Vinent Chancey), tuba (Marcus Rojas),
and drums (Nasheet Waits). Repeats four songs, plus "Spirit Moves"
(which somehow missed the album it was title of) and "United Front" --
three Douglas tunes and Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."
Redundant if you don't care, but seems like more is more to me. Too
bad I got to nag them every time out.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Okkyung Lee: Noisy Love Songs (2011, Tzadik): Cellist,
from Korea, moved to New York 2000; second album on Tzadik; looks like
three or four others. With no lyrics one can argue whether these even
are love songs. That some are noisy is beyond doubt, but not many, and
not very: the cello-violin-bass can turn squelchy, but mostly plot out
sweet melodies, with piano (Craig Taborn) and/or trumpet (Peter Evans)
for occasional elaboration, and percussion (John Hollenbeck and Satoshi
Takeishi) -- lots of tinkly tones.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Ben Allison: Action-Refraction (2011, Palmetto):
Another one I expected to show up but didn't. Pretty good bassist,
even better composer: last three records on Palmetto scored A- here.
Only one original here. The covers start with Monk but into rock
and elsewhere: PJ Harvey, Donnie Hathaway, Neal Young, Samuel Barber,
Paul Williams. Guitarists Steve Cardenas and Brandon Seabrook are
central, with Jason Lindner on synth as well as piano, and Michael
Blake on bass clarinet and tenor sax. Sort of an instrumental prog
rock feel, but tighter, more determined.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Ron Horton: It's a Gadget World . . . (2009, Abeat):
This shows up under Ben Allison's name both in AMG and Rhapsody --
gave me a bit of a pause as it would have broke the string of A-
records mentioned in reviewing Allison's new record. Cover lists
trumpet/flugelhorn player Horton up top in caps, then "featuring
Antonio Zambrini" (piano, also wrote 4 of 9 tracks plus the liner
notes), then way down at the bottom Allison (bass) and Tony Moreno
(drums). Brisk postbop, a couple of nice piano spots, a lot of
first-rate trumpet.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further
listening the first time around.

Unpacking: Found in the mail over the last week:

The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra: The Symphonic Celtic Album (Silva Screen)

Avram Fefer/Eric Revis/Chad Taylor: Eliyahu (Not Two)

Nilson Matta & Roni Ben-Hur: Mojave (Motéma): May 10

Scanner with the Post Modern Jazz Quartet: Blink of an Eye (Thirsty Ear)

Weekend Roundup

I keep encountering discussions of health economics in which patients
are referred to as "consumers," after which the usual mantra of freedom
of choice is invoked on behalf of voucherizing Medicare, or whatever.
[ . . . ]

The idea that all this can be reduced to money -- that doctors are
just people selling services to consumers of health care -- is, well,
sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that
something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with
our society's values.

Krugman followed up with a column,
Patients Are Not Consumers. Main thing I would add is that growth
of health care spending shows that we desire better health care and
are willing to spend more to get it, so cost-containment efforts are
inherently suspicious. Cost-containment seems urgent now because we
have a profit-seeking health care system that ensures that any money
we're willing to spend will be captured by providers regardless of
benefits -- and indeed a lot of money spent produces no benefits at
all, plus a lot goes into excess profits. The political focus needs
to be on better health care for more people. One way to accomplish
that is to reduce waste, but if better results require more spending
it should be clear that we can raise money for that.

Paul Krugman: On Pity for the Rich:
As fewer people buy the line about trickle-down economics, the right
more and more argues "that taxing the rich is unfair -- they made it,
they should keep it."

But my take is that what we're looking at is the closing of the conservative
intellectual universe, the creation of an echo chamber in which rightists
talk only to each other, and in which even the pretense of caring about
ordinary people is disappearing. I mean, we've been living for some time
in an environment in which the WSJ can refer, unselfconsciously, to people
making too little to pay income taxes as "lucky duckies"; where Chicago
professors making several hundred thousand a year whine that they can't
afford any more taxes, and are surprised when that rubs some people the
wrong way. Why wouldn't such people find it completely natural to think
that the hurt feelings of the rich are the main consideration in economic
policy?

I thought that a review of a business career marked by, to borrow O'Brien's
summation, "repeated failures, flirtations with personal bankruptcy,
sequential corporate bankruptcies, [and] the squandering of billions of
dollars" would provide grist for a thorough denunciation of the Donald.
As the political analysts have been quick to point out, Trump's career
should be a gold mine for opposition researchers -- and not just because
of the multiplicity of political views he has expressed. Let's not forget
that in the early 1990s, the Trump brand meant failure. He had fatally
overextended himself by wasting billions of dollars of borrowed money on
a spending spree that included, among other things, casinos, airlines,
ridiculously overpriced hotels, and luxury yachts unloaded by bankrupt
Middle Eastern arms sellers.

He dumped his first wife for a younger trophy, and then dumped her for
another trophy, shrugging off the tabloid chatter by telling a reporter
"You know, it really doesn't matter what they write when you've got a
young and beautiful piece of ass." He made a habit of buying property
when the price was high, and then being forced to unload it at a huge
loss when the real estate market crashed. He has proved comically inept
as an Atlantic City casino owner -- really, it's one thing to imagine a
gambling mogul in the White House, but an incompetent one? In the course
of his career, he's been bailed out by his father, by his siblings, and
by the banks to whom he owed hundreds of millions of dollars. By any
rational standpoint, his disasters are far more spectacular than his
successes. He's a reality-television star, for crying out loud!
[ . . . ]

Think about it. We are currently facing the consequences of living on
borrowed money in the wake of a huge real estate meltdown. Who, I ask
you, has had a more intimate acquaintance with what happens when the
value of your real estate holdings collapse and your creditors come
calling than Donald Trump? And yet he keeps living to see another day!
Donald Trump is the living, breathing proof of John Maynard Keynes'
famous maxim: "If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are
at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy."
[ . . . ] It's doesn't take much reflection to
realize that this is exactly the kind of life experience that suits
our current predicament. Trump, as president, would realize that the
extent of U.S. indebtedness to the bond market and foreign creditors
is simply too great to allow for any kind of default, and he would
undoubtedly find a way to weasel through. We need a president who
knows how to get bailouts, not give them!

Leonard goes on to liken Trump to Reagan:

We need a president who just never gets down in the dumps, who always
can blithely misrepresent misfortune as heaven's boon and knows how to
find a silver lining in any imploding balance sheet. Timothy O'Brien's
biography paints a portrait of Trump suffused in Reaganesque hues. But
for Trump, every day isn't just "morning in America" -- it's morning
in America on a private jet with a hot babe bringing you a mimosa while
you fly to Palm Beach for the unveiling of a statue of yourself. Trump
is one upbeat mofo. O'Brien writes that his family followed "the
power-of-positive thinking teachings of the Reverend Norman Vincent
Peale," and it shows. As president, Trump wouldn't always be bringing
us down by harping on rising healthcare costs or unmanageable deficits
or the failure of our schools. He'd just redefine it all as a massive
party, and we'd feel much better. It worked for Reagan, and Trump is
nothing if not a creation of the go-go '80s.

Unfortunately, Obama may be more frightened by the S-word than Palin.
When a New York Times reporter asked the president in March 2009
whether his domestic policies suggested he was a socialist, a relaxed
Obama replied, "The answer would be no." He said he was being criticized
simply because he was "making some very tough choices" on the budget.
But after he talked with his hyper-cautious counselors, he began to
worry. So he called the reporter back and said, "It was hard for me to
believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question."
Then, as if reading from talking points, Obama declared, "It wasn't
under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. And it
wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement, the
prescription drug plan, without a source of funding.

"We've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely
consistent with free-market principles," said Obama, who concluded with
the kicker, "Some of the same folks who are throwing the word 'socialist'
around can't say the same."

There's more than a kernel of truth to this statement. Obama really
is avoiding consideration of socialist, or even mildly social democratic,
responses to the problems that confront him. He took the single-payer
option off the table at the start of the healthcare debate, rejecting
the approach that in other countries has provided quality care to all
citizens at lower cost. His supposedly "socialist" response to the
collapse of the auto industry was to give tens of billions in bailout
funding to GM and Chrysler, which used the money to lay off thousands
of workers and then relocate several dozen plants abroad -- an approach
about as far as a country can get from the social democratic model of
using public investment and industrial policy to promote job creation
and community renewal. And when BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded,
threatening the entire Gulf Coast, instead of putting the Army Corps of
Engineers and other government agencies in charge of the crisis, Obama
left it to the corporation that had lied about the extent of the spill,
had made decisions based on its bottom line rather than environmental
and human needs, and had failed at even the most basic tasks.

So we should take the president at his word when he says he's acting
on free-market principles. The problem, of course, is that Obama's
rigidity in this regard is leading him to dismiss ideas that are often
sounder than private-sector fixes.

In fact, there are two histories of "socialism" in America: one by
people who seek to build a robust social security network around a free
enterprise system that has been tamed and santized through sensible
regulation; another by hysterics who think they can kill anything they
dislike by screaming "socialist" (or "Bolshevik" or "communist" or,
what the hell, "fascist" -- whatever the red-button word du jour happens
to be). For
the record, Obama would prefer to be counted among the latter. But he
keeps losing ground -- he'd rather be seen as cool than hysterical,
so aside from the above rant about an "entitlement" that is actually
a standard part of most private sector health insurance policies, he
usually scores his anti-socialist points by promoting overexpensive
and dysfunctional schemes backed by his well-heeled sponsors.

Later on, Nichols writes: "The point here is not to defend socialism.
What we should be defending is history -- American history, with its
rich and vibrant hues, some of them red." Why not defend socialism?
Many good ideas originated with socialists, and other "good enough"
ideas came out of the establishment's attempts to fend off socialist
ideas.

The numskulls and bigots elected to various state legislatures in the last
election will be, like Bush and Reagan's many judges, the longest-lasting
and probably most damaging consequence of the recent Republican resurgence.
Because in state governments, where the national press seldom ventures,
where local newspapers are operating with tiny staffs and shrinking
readerships, and where local TV news is largely useless, these morons are
basically able to pass any fool idea lobbyists and far-right think tanks
can cook up -- and there is an entire cottage industry devoted to cooking
up awful ideas for Republican state legislatures to pass. (Bills like
Arizona's immigration crackdown do not spring fully formed from the minds
of cretinous state senators.)

Matthew Yglesias: The Declining Effective Tax Rate of America's 400 Highest
Earning Individuals: The chart here is pretty interesting. Not only
does it show big drops that correspond to legal changes like the 2001 Bush
tax cuts or Clinton's capital gains cut; it shows a gradual decline in
effective tax rates even without legal changes, presumably as the rich
learn to better game the system, or possibly due to lax enforcement (as
certainly happened under Bush). This, of course, is only part of the
reason the rich keep getting richer, and actually the less important
part. The increase in incomes is even greater for lots of reasons having
little to do with taxes, but one reason that does is that untaxed income
compounds faster.

Matthew Yglesias: The Economics of Trust: Big international chart
here of "percent of people expressing a high level of trust in others,
2008": US is pegged at 48.7, surrounded by a bunch of East European
countries (Poland, Hungary, and Slovak Republic just below; Slovenia
and Czech Republic just above); Western Europe starts with France and
Ireland at 55.8; Japan and Germany at 60.7 and 61.1; UK at 68.9 and
NZ at 69.1; Switzerland and Netherlands in the 70s; the Scandinavian
countries ranging from 83.7 (Sweden) to 88.8 (Denmark). Only surprises
to me were Korea (low at 46.2; Mexico is 26.1), Estonia (72.1, working
hard on becoming Scandinavian), and Israel (71.3, probably not a random
sample). In general, trust correlates well with equality, and with a
strong social security net -- especially an equitable health care
system (probably why the UK rates higher than France or Germany).
It is pretty much impossible to overstate the importance of trust in
the functioning of complex modern societies. That is the main reason
political efforts to divide and conquer are so dangerous.

I was going to recommend
DD Guttenplan: On the Case: On Simon Wiesenthal, a review of Tom
Segev's Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends (2010, Doubleday),
but it's locked up behind some kind of paywall, inaccessible by me even
though I'm a card-carrying subscriber to The Nation (well, actually
it's in my wife' name). Fairly minor and relatively personal point: I
read Wiesenthal's The Murderers Among Us quite early in my
personal/political evolution, so it was one of my first sources for
learning about the Holocaust. Much later I read most of Segev's important
books on Israel, including his book on the selective use and abuse of
history in The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust.

Expert Comments

On James Carter:

I've long held the theory that James Carter was first spoiled
and then throttled and swallowed by the idea of having a major
label contract. In the early 1990s Carter could play mainstream
in Tough Young Tenors and avant in Julius Hemphill's group. With
Atlantic he could do both and get distributed, but he couldn't
release more than an album or two per year, even though he was
generating tons of ideas and credibly playing five saxophones,
so compared to comparably prodigious players like David Murray
and Ken Vandermark he was poorly documented -- at the same time
better known. Then he followed Yves Beauvais to Columbia and cut
one album -- the worst album of his career -- and got dropped.
Since then his output has been spotty, recording occasionally
while waiting for another major label to give him his due --
indeed, Emarcy released Present Tense in 2008 and has
another coming out this year: Caribbean Rhapsody -- looks
like a real bad idea to me, a "concerto for saxophones and orchestra."

Still, he's had a better decade since 2001 than any of the other
Tough Young Tenors -- even if you throw in some similar non-group
players of great promise like Mark Turner. Live at Baker's Keyboard
Lounge and Heaven on Earth are two good live albums. He's
had a couple of HM-level albums. He's chipped in with Odean Pope and
World Saxophone Quartet. And my favorites have been two albums with
the Dutch group De Nazaten where he's not the critical player but
lifts the group's game. I'd like to see him do more like that.
Interestingly, his Detroit quartet have all had respectable careers
on the avant-garde -- especially Craig Taborn, but also Jaribu Shahid
and Tani Tabbal.

Books

Another batch of 40 book notes, my first such since February 12.
Didn't even have that much backlog, probably because I've spent very
little time in bookstores lately (aside from the Borders closeout),
but I've been researching this since Tuesday and they're piling up.
So maybe another next week instead of next month.

Eric Alterman: Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama
(paperback, 2011, Nation Books): Liberal columnist, tries to present
a case that Obama's post-election turn to the right is the fault of a
system that is deeply and intractably conservative. That may be true,
to a point, but it isn't very reassuring: seems to me like an indictment
both of the system and the man unwilling to risk his political future
on convincing the American people to do the right things.

Joe Bageant: Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir (paperback,
2011, Scribe): Previously wrote Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches
From America's Class War (2007, Crown), the cursory tales of a
class-conscious redneck. Might seem presumptuous to write a memoir,
but he got cancer and died already, so quit bitching.

Moustafa Bayoumi, ed: Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The
Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course
of the Israel/Palestine Conflict (paperback, 2010, Haymarket):
Too soon, I'd say, to say much about deflecting the course of the
conflict, but Israel's display of gratuitous violence certainly
had the effect of driving their once-carefully cultivated alliance
with Turkey off the deep end.

Wendell Berry: What Matters? Economics for a Renewed
Commonwealth (paperback, 2010, Counterpoint): Collection
of essays, mostly from old books but possibly some new stuff.
Farmer, writer, community-minded, so old-fashioned he cuts through
a lot of new-fangledness we readily take for granted, more often
than not making profound points.

David Brooks: The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love,
Character, and Achievement (2011, Random House): What is it
about New York Times columnists that drives them to such extreme
heights of idiocy?

James Carroll: Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City
Ignites Our Modern World (2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt):
Sometime journalist, sometime historian, always Catholic, takes a
dim view of war and prejudice which leads to some soul searching.
Not sure what exactly this covers or why it matters, except inasmuch
as the histories of western religion and war have been interweaved,
and still are.

G Paul Chambers: Head Shot: The Science Behind the JFK
Assassination (2010, Prometheus): Another review of the
evidence, this time bolstered by the author's physics credentials.
Doesn't indulge in conspiracy speculation, but does reject the
official story that all shots came from a single gun.

Diane Coyle: The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy
as if the Future Matters (2011, Princeton University Press):
Challenges: Happiness, Nature, Posterity, Fairness, Trust; Obstacles:
Measurement, Values, Institutions; The Manifesto of Enough. Looks like
a fairly serious attempt to reframe economics within the constraints
of sustainability, occasioned by the evident looming of crises ranging
from resource exhaustion to climate change.

Gerard Dumenil/Dominique Levy: The Crisis of Neoliberalism
(2011, Harvard University Press): The collapse as a crisis of ideology
on top of deep-seated fissures. Rx includes: "limits on free trade and
the free international movement of capital; policies aimed at improving
education, research, and infrastructure; reindustrialization; and the
taxation of higher incomes."

Howard Friel: The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight
About Global Warming (2010, Yale University Press): One thing
that makes me doubt Bjorn Lomberg's Skeptical Environmentalist
shtick is how readily our good friends at Koch Industries reprint his
arguments, especially against global warming. This may seem specialized,
but Lomborg himself is a cottage industry.

David N Gibbs: First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention
and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (paperback, 2009, Vanderbilt
University Press): Another critical book on the US intervention in
Yugoslavia, and evidently one of the best. A lot of strange things
about those wars, not to mention apologists and advocates like
Samantha Powers.

James Gleick: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
(2011, Pantheon): The journalist who hipped everyone to chaos theory
digs up something less novel: information theory -- or maybe it's just
that I've been reading about Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, Norbert Wiener,
and John Von Neumann for decades now. I was much impressed with Gleick's
Chaos and his Feynman biography Genius, but thought he
wrote Faster a bit too fast. He should have come up with more
than he did there.

Jeff Goodell: How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and
the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate (2010, Houghton
Mifflin): Journalist, wrote Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind
America's Energy Future (2007), looks into various schemes to
solve global warming by investing new ways to perturb the atmosphere
even more.

Philip Hasheider: The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking,
Curing, and Sausage Making: How to Harvest Your Livestock &
Wild Game (paperback, 2010, Voyageur Press): Looks essential
for anyone willing to contemplate just where your meat comes from,
even if you're not quite ready to take the next step and do it
yourself.

Jonathan Haslam: Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution
to the Fall of the Wall (2011, Yale University Press): We could
use a systematic history of the Cold War from Soviet viewpoints. Not
sure if this is it. One thing that makes me uncomfortable is a previous
title: The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile: A
Case of Assisted Suicide. Suicide?

Mark Hertsgaard: Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on
Earth (2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt): Global warming horror
story, featuring author's daughter who can reasonably expect to live
long enough to see as much as author prognosticates. James Hansen did
something similar, calling his latest Storms of My Grandchildren.

Shir Hever: The Political Economy of Israel's Occupation:
Repression Beyond Exploitation (paperback, 2010, Pluto Press):
The subtitle is key. Most colonial establishments sought to exploit
cheap native labor, and Israel has done more of that than is commonly
acknowledge. But the early focus on "Hebrew Labor" aimed at displacing
native Palestinians, and Israel has repeatedly worked to isolate and
suppress the Palestinian economy.

Frederic Jameson: Valences of the Dialectic
(2009; paperback, Verso, 2010): One of the first American critics
to set himself up as an authority on critical Marxist thinkers --
his 1972 book Marxism and Form lists Adorno, Benjamin,
Marcuse, Bloch, Lukacs, and Sartre on the cover -- and he's had
a long run ever since. Big book (640 pp) on dialectic theories,
Hegel and Sartre in particular, with an attempt to establish
their continued relevance.

Diana Johnstone: Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and
Western Illusions (paperback, 2003, Monthly Review Press):
I've never managed to get a good grip on what the US did in Bosnia
and Kosovo in the 1990s, other than to notice that the cult of
"Humanitarian Intervention" smelled funny. This is one book I've
seen commonly referenced by critics, all the more timely as the
Humanitarians are once again on the march.

Toby Craig Jones: Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water
Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (2010, Harvard University
Press): It's certainly obvious that the economic parameters of
Saudi Arabia are determined by oil and water: oil pays for the
economy, but lack of water limits how much of that wealth can
be reinvested in the country. Other books tend to focuse on
religion -- something we used to call superstructure.

Stanley Kurtz: Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold
Story of American Socialism (2010, Treshold Editions): The
hits keep on coming, this exceptionally lame one by a National
Review hack (also Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy
Center). More imaginative is David Freddoso's latest, Gangster
Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy (2011,
Regnery); hallucinatory even is Jack Cashill's Deconstructing
Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern
President (2011, Threshold), which reveals that Obama's books
were actually written by "terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers." Also out
soon is Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D.: Where's the Birth Certificate:
The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President
(2011, WND). I should set up a separate file for all this shit --
all four authors here are serial offenders.

Pauline Maier: Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788 (2010, Simon & Schuster): Despite veneration of
the Founding Fathers, I suspect that most Tea Partiers, had they known
anything about the subject, would have sided with the anti-federalists
against ratifying the U.S. Constitution. Don't know whether that had
any effect on Maier -- one of the leading historians of the period --
or whether she was just interested in the selling and resistance to
such a fundamental political change, as opposed to the much better
known story of how the Constitution was framed.

Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
(2011, Viking): Major new biography, reportedly ten years in the works.
Marable, who died a few days before this book was released, has over a
dozen books on African-American history and politics, most recently
Beyond Boundaries: The Manning Marable Reader (2010; paperback,
2011, Paradigm), going back through Black Liberation in Conservative
America (paperback, 1999, South End) to W.E.B. DuBois: Black
Radical Democrat (paperback, 1986, Twayne).

Sari Nusseibeh: What Is a Palestinian State Worth?
(2011, Harvard University Press): Eminent Palestinian, president of
Al-Quds University, previously wrote his autobiography Once Upon
a Country: A Palestinian Life, tries to look beyond two-state
jargon to basic human rights.

Annie Proulx: Bird Cloud (2011, Simon & Schuster):
Memoir by the novelist, about her adopted chunk of Wyoming. She
wrote one of fewer than five works of fiction I read during the
last decade -- the short story collection Close Range
(the one with "Brokeback Mountain"), which I picked up because
I found a section on cattle ranching as knowledgeable as the
best nonfiction (and superbly written as well). Picked this up
in the Borders closeout, then forgot to include it in my post.

Mazin B Qumsiyeh: Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History
of Hope and Empowerment (paperback, 2011, Pluto Press): A
hard-working American activist. Comes at a time when I see little
in the way of empowerment or hope.

Olivier Roy: Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part
Ways (2010, Columbia University Press): French expert on Islam
(and Islamism) generalizes about religion in an age of holy wars.

Bernie Sanders: The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate
Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class (paperback, 2011,
Nation Books): Runs 288 pages, pretty long for a speech; was given
after Obama struck his deal with the devil to extend the Bush tax cuts
for the ultra-rich.

Stephen Singular: The Wichita Divide: Revisiting the Murder
of Dr. George Tiller (2011, St Martin's Press): Previously
wrote books on the murder of radio talk jock Alan Berg, on Wichita's
"BTK" serial killer, on Mormon polygamist Warren Jeffs, and on the
Jon Benet Ramsey case. Looks beyond Scott Roeder to the culture
warriors moving him along.

David Sirota: Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the
World We Live In Now: Our Culture, Out Politics, Our Everything
(2011, Ballantine): The 1980s, that means Ronald Reagan, a new morning
for conservatism; still, there's something unrequited about the whole
experience. By the late 1960s, even the early 1970s, liberalism seemed
to have been fulfilled, with little more to do, it actually became fat
and lazy. But conservatives are insatiable -- they've thrown us into
wars, wrecked the economy, resurrected fear and loathing, yet they're
never satisfied, so even today we have to spend all our efforts keeping
them at bay. I guess that's what Sirota means, but all I see at Amazon
is a list of "Five '80s Flicks That Explain How the '80s Still Define
Our World": Ghostbusters (1984), Die Hard (1988), Rambo:
First Blood Part II (1985), Rocky III (1982), and The Big
Chill (1983). What does all that mean? (BTW, the most popular films
of the 1980s were E.T. and the first two Stars Wars, with
Raiders of the Lost Ark and two more Indiana Jones flicks filling
up most of the top ten.)

David Swanson: War Is a Lie (paperback, 2010, David
Swanson): Looks like a catalog of lies told to justify, to rationalize,
to excuse war. While each war has its own historical context, the
arguments used to promote and protract those ware are pretty much
always the same, so it's recognize them, recognize the falsehoods
they contain, and be prepared to counter them. Swanson previously
wrote Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a
More Perfect Union (paperback, 2009, Seven Stories Press).

Lance Taylor: Maynard's Revenge: The Collapse of Free Market
Macroeconomics (2011, Harvard University Press): For a brief
moment during the great crash of 2008 it seemed likely that economists
would rediscover John Maynard Keynes. Taylor wrote this book in that
moment, a healthy dose of I-told-you-so. Most likely all true too,
but a little late: more timely would be a book on the recovery of
stupidity once the crisis started to pass.

Todd Tucker: Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a
Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History (2009;
Free Press; paperback, 2010, Bison Books): The explosion was in
Idaho in 1961, when a small research reactor melted down, raising
the question of how safe and sane nuclear power is. The admiral
was Hyman Rickover, wo pushed for atomic-power aircraft carriers
and submarines, in turn working to cover up the risks.

Siva Vaidhyanathan: The Googlization of Everything (And Why
We Should Worry) (2011, University of California Press): Author
has written a couple of good books on internet-era social impacts --
Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How
It Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How
the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and
Crashing the System -- so I take his worrying more seriously than
the sour grapes in Ken Auletta's Googled: The End of the World as
We Know It. Still, I don't yet know what he's getting at.

Bing West: The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out
of Afghanistan (2011, Random House): Ex-Marine, veteran of
Reagan's Defense Dept., dependable supporter of America's wars as
recently as his 2008 pro-surge book on Iraq (The Strongest Tribe:
War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq), doesn't seem to like
what the US is doing in Afghanistan, casting doubts on the sacred
COIN theology. Hmm.

Garry Wills: Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer
(2010, Viking): A memoir of sorts, by a journalist who started out in
William Buckley's conservative orbit and gradually turned into a fierce
critic of America's abuse of power, from Vietnam to Bush and not neglecting
the embarrassing Bill Clinton. Also wrote much about American history,
and about religion. Not sure what all we'll find here, but should be
interesting.

Richard Wolffe: Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside
the Obama White House (2010, Crown): Author of Renegade:
The Making of a President (2009), boasts "unrivaled access to
the West Wing," timed his sequel to follow Obama's mid-term election
fiasco. Not sure if the title signals anything other than author's
desire to keep that "unrivaled access" going for another book.

Tim Wu: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information
Empires (2010, Knopf): A history of telecommunications (and
analogous technological businesses) from isolated innovation to monopoly
to dissolution, as if that represents some sort of law of development.
Describes his prime example fairly well, but hard to say how ironclad
the rule is.

Kai Bird: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between
the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (2010; paperback, 2011,
Simon & Schuster): Author's father was a US diplomat in Jerusalem,
Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and author studied in Lebanon. Starts as a
memoir, but provides useful history especially on the 1956 and 1967
wars, plus a rather critical view of King Hussein.
[link]

James Bradley: The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of
Empire and War (2009; paperback, 2010, Little Brown):
Teddy Roosevelt's machinations to parlay America's new imperial
presence in the East Pacific into influence in Asia, a first
step toward America's wars in Asia.
[link]

Jacob S Hacker/Paul Pierson: Winner-Take-All Politics:
How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- and Turned Its Back on the
Middle Class (2010; paperback, 2011, Simon & Schuster):
Not just the middle class, which still gets lip service because
they have the most to lose. Important study of politically-induced
inequality: what happened if not necessarily why.

Simon Johnson/James Kwak: 13 Bankers: The Wall Street
Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (2010, Pantheon;
paperback, 2011, Vintage): One of the main books on the financial
crisis, focusing on the bankers caused it and the political clout
that let them off the hook.
[link]

Michael Lewis: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
(2010; paperback, 2011, WW Norton): Breezy book on the great financial
meltdown, told by tracking the stories of a few traders who bet against
the housing bubble and made a killing.
[link]

Peter Maass: Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
(2009, Knopf; paperback, 2010, Vintage): Far-reaching tour of the
dirty world of the oil industry. Paperback has a dirtier cover.

Bill McKibben: Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
(2010; paperback, 2011, St Martin's Press): Another global warming
alert, more harrowing than ever, packaged with proposals for changing
the economy, living more sustainably, anything but toughing it out.
[link]

Gary Wills: Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the
National Security State (2010; paperback, 2011, Penguin
Books): Give a president the power to blow up the world and he
starts thinking executive power really means something; pretty
much everyone starts thinking that, and soon enough you don't
have much of a democracy any more. Sound familiar?
[link]

Expert Comments

Milo Miles brought up Ms. Clawdy, evidently touted by Ellen Willis
in her rockcrit collection. I chipped in:

Ms. Clawdy was Ella Hirst (or vice versa, or Ellin at the time). We
haven't heard from her in a long time, but she visited a couple times
when we lived in Boston. I haven't heard any tapes, but she played my
synth and sang a couple songs, and I thought she was terrific (still,
as this was long past her active career days). Last I knew was working
as a librarian in the Bay Area. Hard to keep track of people.

Was hoping Laura had more to add. Ella was Laura's friend from their
early days in Boston. Laura had discovered Christgau's writings, and
passed them on to Ella. Ella met Christgau somehow, and they had a
brief affair, during which Ella introduced Laura to Christgau, who
in turn eventually introduced me to Laura.

As I recall, when Hirst was trying to make it as a singer, Naomi
Glauberman was her "manager" handling bookings and promotion. Can't
imagine how they failed to make it (unless principles got in the
way), as both are pretty hard to resist.

Christgau responded:

I used to know Ms. Clawdy pretty well, as Ellin Hirst, though she
was using the alias then as well. Her songs were pretty great, I
always thought, though I found with someone else I used to know pretty
well, Fred Gardner -- who did actually put out an album -- that
hearing the songs of someone you like a lot in close quarters with
them smiling at you is different from hearing the songs on a record. A
certain impact is lost to say the least. Seems to me I heard the songs
several times, but the one I remember best was at a baby grand I think
it was in the summer-vacated apartment of someone she knew on the
Upper West Side. Quite something. It would be nice if some tapes
surfaced. But chances are they would be more material for someone else
to refurbish than anything else. Night Blindness was definitely the
winner.

Expert Comments

On being cool:

Pace sharpsm, I wouldn't say I was "cool" to Abraham Inc.'s Tweet
Tweet. It finished in the top ten of my B+(***) bracket, near the
top of a Jazz CG HM list. I feel pretty good (warm?) about any record I
rate that high. Obviously, that's not my highest recommendation, nor the
highest temperature bracket, but it's rather arbitrary where you draw
those lines. Could be I didn't take it as seriously as I should, either
because the concept seemed so pat or because the publicist was so cheap,
but I hope I pegged it accurately enough that the reader could make an
informed choice. I think it's fair to say I'm cool to what I rate B+(*):
records I find impressive but otherwise don't have much interest in.
And in between are things that are mixed warm-and-cool (or just plain
tepid). So the grade scale does map nicely to a temperature scale.

Tatum made the same "cool" comment about me and PJ Harvey, which I
also have at B+(***), with the additional caveat that I only streamed
it from Rhapsody. I've never been a fan: despised her first two albums,
was blown away by To Bring You My Love, been up and down ever
since. New one tops my metacritic file this year, but thus far the main
competition is James Blake.

One record I am cool to is Tune-Yards, although I'm not done with
it.

Another good Roberto Rodriguez album is Descarga Oriental,
with Maurice El Medioni on Piranha. The First Basket is down
in my HMs due to the usual soundtrack inconsistencies, but it has
some very nice material on it.

Thought I'd tack this on above, but broke it out:

Dan Weiss wrote:

now i just have to decide if i want to delete EMA, beach fossils,
cold cave, elbow*, glasvegas, jessie j*, katy b, micachu, art brut,
feelies*, pains of being pure at heart*, battles, fleet foxes.

Hope we get an update. I've always been curious about what gets
discarded along the way -- something that has always happened all
too silently with CG, even more so now. I've only heard (*), but
they seem pretty deletable to me -- although "Price Tag" (Jessie J)
is a real good single.

Music Week

Music: Current count 18047 [18000] rated (+47), 888 [881] unrated (+7).
High rated count. Started week playing David Murray off Rhapsody, then
Billy Bang died so I followed up on whatever I could find there. Generally
favored Rhapsody over Jazz Prospecting in this first week of the new
round, although I did managed to catch enough jazz to post. Allergies
have been very debilitating this past week, continuing today and most
likely for a few weeks more. Had dinner with Ruth Olay last week: turns
out she's a good friend of Alice Powell's. Only found the one record on
Rhapsody. Played parts of two better ones at dinner. I thought at first
I should include some "complete disclosure" but the orchestra was so
lame I decided that would be overkill. I've known very few people who
ever released records, but I've been brutally honest in all such cases.

Billy Bang Sextet: The Fire From Within (1984 [1985],
Soul Note): Rhapsody files this under trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, who
dominates the early going, but the violin-guitar-bass keep it all
moving, as does Thurman Barker's marimba on top of Zen Matsuura's
drums.
A- [Rhapsody]

Marilyn Crispell: Live in Berlin (1982 [1984],
Black Saint): One piece on first side, two on second, all brawling, scrapping
free jazz, the pianist doing her best Cecil Taylor impression, Peter
Kowald and John Betsch hitting back, the quartet filled out out with
violinist Billy Bang, stuck between a horn role and the bassist, not
amped loud enough to take over the album, but very much in the thick
of things.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

David Murray: Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club
(1977 [2010], Jazzwerkstatt): In 2006 I was one of five writers asked
to work up a consumer guide to the records of a jazz great. I was the
only one to pick a living artist: tenor saxophonist David Murray, b.
1955 in California, raised on church, funk, and saxophonists from Paul
Gonsalves to Albert Ayler. (The others opted for Billie Holiday, John
Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Sun Ra.) I managed to pick out and write
short reviews of seventeen key albums, from Low Class Conspiracy
in 1976 through Now Is Another Time in 2003. At the time I
credited him with 90 albums as a leader and 90 more as a sideman, and
figured I had heard 60 + 40 of them -- pretty good that that left some
gaps, most notably in the late 1970s when he moved to New York and took
the "jazz loft scene" by storm. That period is mostly documented by
live albums like this one on defunct labels: this set was originally
released by India Navigation on two LPs, then in 1989 was squeezed onto
one CD by hacking about eight minutes off the last song. It's finally
back in print, the times slightly rejiggered from the CD. It's not a
long lost classic, but it has historical interest -- for one thing,
Murray plans soprano sax on his trashed trad jazz "Bechet's Bounce" --
and then some. A quartet with Lester Bowie the opposite horn, Fred
Hopkins on bass, and Phillip Wilson on drums. Hopkins is already a
fascinating player, and Bowie's wit complements Murray's power.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

David Murray: Children (1984 [1986], Black Saint):
Three Murray tunes plus "All the Things You Are" done by a quintet
with James "Blood" Ulmer's guitar and Don Pullen's piano locked in
a furious race; thrilling when they keep it up, loses something
when the pace slackens.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

David Murray/Jack DeJohnette: In Our Style (1986,
DIW): Mostly tenor sax-drums duets, the drummer marvelously supportive
(as ever), the saxophonist psyched up; two cuts add Fred Hopkins on bass,
never a bad idea; DeJohnette plays a bit of credible piano, and kicks
off the final cut with some exotic percussion -- I thought vibes at
first, but given the title is "Kalimba" it's most likely African thumb
piano.
A- [Rhapsody]

David Murray: Lovers (1988 [1989], DIW): Cut at the
same January 1988 studio session that also produced Deep River,
Ballads, and Spirituals, same quartet; mostly ballads,
"In a Sentimental Mood" the only standard, its solo coda Murray at
his most tender; on "Ming" pianist Dave Burrell rises to matche
Murray's emotional bravura.
A- [Rhapsody]

David Murray Quartet: Love and Sorrow (1993 [1996],
DIW): Another ballad album, framed with "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home
To" and "You Don't Know What Love Is"; the sole original "Sorrow Song
(for W.E.B. DuBois)" leading into "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" for
what may be his most quiet storm side ever; an especially touching
John Hicks on piano, Fred Hopkins on bass, Idris Muhammad on drums.
A- [Rhapsody]

David Murray: Circles: Live in Cracow (2003, Not Two):
Sax trio, featuring local bass and drums duo, telepathic twins Marcin
Oles and Bartlomiej Brat Oles, although they seem to be overwhelmed by
their guest; Murray holds the spotlight, showing off his extensive bag
of improvisatory tricks, especially on bass clarinet.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Ruth Olay: Olay! O.K.! (1963 [2009], Essential Media
Group): A jazz singer from Los Angeles, recorded a dozen albums from
1956-66, this the only one even marginally in print; nothing on the
nondescript string orchestra -- maybe they're in a witness protection
program? -- but the singer has remarkable poise.
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

String Trio of New York: Area Code 212 (1980 [1981],
Black Saint): Long before anyone spoke of "chamber jazz" a pioneering
configuration, with violin (Billy Bang), guitar (James Emery), and
bass (John Lindberg), all three contributing songs and balancing off
their efforts; Emery has the toughest time, sometimes suggesting bits
of Spanish classical, but the record picks up steam when Bang takes
charge.
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

String Trio of New York: Common Goal (1981 [1982],
Black Saint): Emery's guitar stands apart, struck into distinct notes
or chords where the violin and bass are mostly arco, but this time
that often works as percussion; besides, Bang and Lindberg work up
more of a lather, even when Bang interjects some flute on "San San
Nana" -- their intensity sweeps all before it; and they look like
such nice guys on the cover.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

String Trio of New York: Rebirth of a Feeling (1983
[1984], Black Saint): Seems like pretty close to their average album,
with Lindberg's bass stout and central, Bang's violin whirling around
the periphery, and Emery's guitar poking holes here and there; Emery
appears on the cover with a small guitar, credit says soprano guitar.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

String Trio of New York: Natural Balance (1986,
Black Saint): Bang's fifth and last album with the group -- Lindberg
and Emery carried on with 13 more albums up through 2008, using in
series a veritable pantheon of violinists: Charles Burnham, Regina
Carter, Diane Monroe, Rob Thomas; Emery's "Texas Koto Blues" is the
most striking thing here, both before and after Bang enters; first
record so far where I felt Emery was key, not much else stands out.
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

Jazz Prospecting (JCG #27, Part 1)

No further news on Jazz Consumer Guide (26): it's in the capable
hands of new Village Voice music editor Maura Johnston, who
has yet to acknowledge, schedule, edit, etc. No reason I know of why
that won't happen eventually; just not yet. I figured I'd probably
decompress and blow off this week, but I have enough new prospecting
to post. (Just not enough real discoveries to merit chasing down a
cover scan, although the Jaki Byard is the one I'd go for if I had
to go for one.) Did listen to more non-jazz on Rhapsody, but I don't
have anything to recommend there either.

Subtle Lip Can (2010, Drip Audio): Canadian trio:
Isaiah Ceccarelli (percussion, piano), Bernard Falaise (guitar),
Joshua Zubot (violin, low octave violin). Falaise is the best known:
b. 1965, has three records under his own name since 2000, plays in
various borderline rock/jazz groups, notably Miriodor. Zubot is
presumably related to violinist and label head Jesse Zubot (who
is credited here with mastering the disc). He also plays in a
bluegrass group called The Murder Ballads. Ceccarelli also seems
like a familiar surname, but the only jazz Ceccarellis I've been
able to find (two of them) are firmly rooted in Europe. First
group record. Fractured, somewhat random noise, quasi-industrial
with the strings and percussion. Striking at first, but doesn't
grow into something you want to spend much time with.
B+(*)

Diego Urcola Quartet: Appreciation (2010 [2011],
CAM Jazz): Trumpet player, b. 1965 in Argentina, fourth album
since 2003. Fronts a very capable group with Luis Perdomo on
piano, Hans Gawischnig on bass, and Eric McPherson on drums --
those name "featuring" on the front cover, plus Yosvany Terry
is credited with chekere. All originals, each dedicated to
someone worthy.
B+(**)

Bill Frisell: Sign of Life (2010 [2011], Savoy Jazz):
Effectively a string quarter only with Frisell's guitar in place of
one of the violins -- the other is Jenny Scheinman's, with Eyvind
Kang on viola and Hank Roberts on cello, a group he calls his 858
Quartet. He used this lineup before on Richter 858 (2005,
Songlines), which I thought took the chamber jazz concept way too
far toward classical. This rarely does so, roughly splitting the
difference with his Americana-ish trio. All original pieces, unlike
recent albums where there's usually a couple covers to refer to.
B+(**)

Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra: Hothouse Stomp:
The Music of 1920s Chicago and Harlem (2009 [2011], Accurate):
Trumpet player, from Florida, moved to Boston in 2000, starting a
band called Beat Circus, which has three albums of "Weird American
Gothic" (on Cuneiform; haven't heard them). Band here includes some
well known players: Andy Laster and Matt Bauder on saxes, Curtis
Hasselbring on trombone, Brandon Seabrook on guitar; also Dennis
Lichtman on clarinet, violin, viola, tuba, and drums. Focuses on
four bands: Charlie Johnson's Paradise Orchestra, McKinney's Cotton
Pickers, Tiny Parham and His Musicians, and Fess Williams' Royal
Flush Orchestra. Gets many of the pre-swing quirks right, but I'm
not sure that's a plus.
B+(**)

Open Graves with Stuart Dempster: Flightpatterns
(2010 [2011], Prefecture): Sometimes I think it might be interesting
to expand my niche a bit and try to cover anything that shows up in
the post-classical contemporary composition whatever-you-call-it
grabbag -- something that the Voice covered extensively for
many years under Tom Johnson and Kyle Gann -- but then I remember
that I don't know very much about the subject and I haven't followed
it at all closely for a good twenty years. Still, I do recognize
Dempster: trombonist, b. 1936, specializes in long, slow drone
pieces done in huge, echo-laden chambers. Open Graves is Jesse
Olsen ("multi-instrumentalist") and Paul Kikuchi (percussionist),
from Seattle. This is typical of Dempster, but unless you listen
to it in your own sensory-deprivation chamber you're unlikely to
get much more than tinkles and faint echoes out of it.
B-

GRASS on Fire: Gowanus Reggae and Ska Society Plays Catch
a Fire (2010, Mighty Gowanus): "GRASS" is an acronym for
Gowanus Reggae and Ska Society. Album is "produced by Sumo &
Natecha," which as best I can translate are bassist J.A. Granelli
and keyboardist Nate Shaw. Catch a Fire is the 1973 Wailers
album, with "Kinky Reggae" and "Midnight Ravers" turned into "Kinky
Midnight" and "High Tide or Low Tide" added from the bonus tracks
that surfaced on several of the numerous reissues. The others I
recognize are notable jazz musicians, like saxophonists Paul Carlon
and Ohad Talmor -- indeed, the saxes and Mark Miller's trombone are
the main things that distinguish this edition. No vocal credits,
but someone can't help but sing along to "Slave Driver."
B

Scanner with the Post Modern Jazz Quartet: Blink of an Eye
(2010, Thirsty Ear): Scanner is Robin Rimbaud, b. 1964 in London, producer,
AMG credits him with 38 albums since 1992. The PMJQ advances on the classic
Modern Jazz Quartet lineup: Khan Jamal on vibes, Matthew Shipp on piano,
Michael Bisio on bass, Michael Thompson on drums. It's been several years
since Shipp worked with a DJ, so it's nice to get some of the mechanistic
beats back in play -- best part is the tail end where that's about the only
thing going. Harder to read Jamal here. He's an innovative player, even
further removed from Milt Jackson than Shipp is from John Lewis, but I'm
having trouble picking him out. If I get a real copy I'll give this another
shot.
B+(**) [advance]

Jaki Byard: A Matter of Black and White: Live at the Keystone
Korner, Vol. 2 (1978-79 [2011], High Note): Pianist, 1922-99,
released his first record in 1960, was an important figure in the 1960s,
not avant-garde but not in any mainstream either -- Out Front!
(1961) is a prime example, and I also like The Last From Lennie's
(1965, came out in 2003) although I missed the two volumes that preceded
it. Solo piano, well-worn standards -- "God Bless the Child," "Alexander's
Ragtime Band," "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans," "I Know
a Place," "'Round Midnight," "Day Dream," among others. Bright, touching.
B+(***)

Etta Jones & Houston Person: The Way We Were: Live in
Concert (2000 [2011], High Note): Blues-based jazz singer,
aspired to Billie Holiday but reminds me more of Bessie Smith, b.
1928, cut quite a few records for Prestige 1960-65, got a second
shot with Muse in 1975 and High Note in 1997, which is to say she
owed her career to Joe Fields, an exec at Prestige and owner of
Muse and High Note, and to Houston Person, his A&R man and her
regular saxophonist. This starts with just the band for four cuts --
Stan Hope (piano), George Kaye (bass), Chip White (drums), and
Person -- starting with "Do Nothin' 'Till You Hear From Me" and
culminating in a gorgeous "Please Send Me Someone to Love." Jones
enters with "Fine and Mellow," "Lady Be Good," but doesn't really
take charge until the end, with "Ma, He's Makin' Eyes at Me" and
a "I'll Be Seeing You" that can only be described as swinging.
She died a year later, so some credit for the souvenir.
B+(**)

Eric Alexander: Don't Follow the Crowd (2010 [2011],
High Note): Prolific tenor saxophonist, big mainstream sound, capable
on ballads, even better at speed. Quartet with Harold Mabern on piano,
Nat Reeves on bass, Joe Farnsworth on drums. Pretty much his typical
album, although Mabern is a slight shift from his usual pianists.
B+(**)

Clarence "Jelly" Johnson: Low Down Papa (1920s
[2011], Delmark): Enhanced piano rolls, second volume in Delmark's
series after Jimmy Blythe's Messin' Around Blues. Johnson
is more obscure: was in the army 1917-19, started recording piano
rolls after he got out -- no specific dates but liner notes imply
1920-23; Johnson recorded for Paramount 1923-25, but I don't know
how much. Liner notes say he moved to Detroit in late 1920s, and
died there on August 9, but don't say which year. Sounds pretty
up-to-date if these were recorded that early -- no residual traces
of ragtime which still marked most 1910's pianists. Does sound a
little bloodless.
B+(**)

The Lee Shaw Trio: Live at Art Gallery Reutlingen
(2009 [2011], ARC): Pianist, b. 1926 in Oklahoma, switched from
classical to jazz after meeting Count Basie, married drummer Stan
Shaw and moved to Albany, NY, a good place to remain obscure.
First record was 1996 on avant-garde label CIMP; second came after
Stan Shaw died in 2001, and now she has eight. Not really a trio
record: first four cuts add baritone saxophonist Michael Lutzeier,
three of the last four tenor saxophinist Johannes Enders, both
impressively out front on covers like "Falling in Love Again,"
"Body and Soul," and "Stella by Starlight."
B+(**)

John Medeski & Lee Shaw: Together Again: Live at the
Egg (2009 [2011], ARC): Before Shaw started recording in
her 70s, she taught pianos, and Medeski was one of her more famous
students. With Shaw's trio, Medeski doubles up on piano or plays
organ (or melodica). The piano is nice and crisp, and the organ
kicks up quite a groove.
B+(*)

Kermit Driscoll: Reveille (2010 [2011], Nineteen-Eight):
Bassist, b. 1956 in Nebraska, plays acoustic and electric; studied with
Jaco Pastorius, graduated from Berklee. First album on his own, although
he has about 60 side-credits since 1987, many with Bill Frisell (who
returns the favor here), some in groups like New and Used. With Kris
Davis on piano (sometimes prepared) and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums. Wrote
8 of 10 songs, with Trad's "Chicken Reel" offering the best Frisell
effect. (The other cover is from Joe Zawinul, also exceptional in its
power riffing.) In effect, a slightly less distinctive Frisell album.
B+(**)

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further
listening the first time around.

Late last year, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) gave us his first big
hint that his grasp of economics is awfully weak. In December, commenting
on unemployment, Pawlenty declared that the private sector is losing jobs
while public-sector jobs are "booming" -- which is the exact opposite of
reality. [ . . . ]

Let's also not forget that in December 2008, at the height of a global
economic crisis and the United States facing a brutal depression, Pawlenty
stepped up to offer a solution: a five-year spending freeze and a balanced
budget amendment to the Constitution.

But if Pawlenty actually means what he's saying, his approach to economic,
fiscal, and monetary policy isn't just wrong; it's dangerous. If he's selling
nonsense to win a primary, Pawlenty is a cynical hack. If he's sincere,
Pawlenty has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

You've been reporting on right-wing extremist activity since 1987,
when you looked into the 1984 murder of talk radio host Alan Berg. How
has it changed in the past 25 years?

You know, when I wrote about Alan Berg, I was writing about some very
marginalized people. These were a bunch of white guys without jobs, and
no money and no prospects and nothing going on; some had been to prison.

Now, [when we talk about the persecution of George Tiller,] we're
talking about the attorney general of the state of Kansas. Now we're
talking about some of the most successful figures in the American media --
we're talking about multimillionaires who get paid to demonize people on
national television, who get paid millions and millions of dollars to tell
people [that] Tiller['s] the Baby Killer, who get paid to deny all the
complexities we're talking about, it's not just. It's an entire society
that's said, "Hey, we're going to reward this kind of behavior."

And that filters down. It affects everything. It's an emotional
atmosphere, and it not only affects the general culture -- think about
the people who are at risk in that culture, emotionally, psychologically.
[People] who are on edge, like [Dr. Tiller's murderer] Scott Roeder,
[who was] diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. Or the man who
killed Alan Berg, Bruce Pierce, [who was] clearly mentally unstable.
This stuff filters down. And then when the blood hits the wall, and the
bullets fly, everyone stands back and says, "Well we never intended that.
We were just talking."

Chal was a formidable and -- I'm tempted to say -- driven man. After his
death, I received a letter from a high school friend who said much the
same thing. "I always admired Chal's ability to really focus in on an
interest. I hate to use the word, but it bordered on zealotry. An example
was his 'passion' for collecting streetcar and bus transfer slips. As I
recall, they were colorful and contained a lot of information about the
routes."

I had to laugh when I read this, and I offer it as a piece of advice
to parents who may have similarly focused kids: don't worry if they're
memorizing baseball statistics. It may lead to something far more important.

Andrew Leonard: Ikea's Third World Outsourcing Adventure -- in the US:
As the Swedish home furnishings company sinks ever deeper into the low
end furniture market, they have to cut costs, so now they're exporting
expensive Swedish jobs to a dirt cheap anti-labor haven: Virginia. My
general impression has been that European capitalists, which have been
investing in US companies heavily since the 1980s, have tended to be
relatively benign managers -- e.g., used to working with unions, used
to government regulations protecting workers. But the US is gravitating
ever more towards becoming a third world country, at least around the
gated enclaves of the rich, and this is more proof.

As for Virginia, note that a couple weeks ago a fourth grade teacher
there held a
mock auction of black students to teach civil war lesson. The lesson
seems to be how much the white upper crust longs for the good old days
of slavery -- as if wages in Virginia weren't low enough and working
conditions weren't harsh enough already.

Andrew Leonard: Sorry, Obama, but Budget Cuts Are Not "Historic":
In 2006, the Democrats won both houses of Congress in a historic
rejection of Republican congressional control, but what did we the
people get for our efforts? Nada, as long as Bush was president.
In 2008, a Democrat -- indeed, one commonly viewed as a relatively
progressive one -- replaced Bush and the Democrats extended their
congressional majorities, including a "fillibuster-proof" Senate.
What did that accomplish? Well, not much. Pretty much every piece
of legislation that got through the House got stonewalled and/or
gutted in the Senate, victims not only of intransigent Republicans
but of the most corrupt middle-of-the-road Democrats. In 2010, the
voters foolishly reversed course and gave the Republicans toehold
control of the House, so we have to suffer two years of non-stop
hostage crises as the right-wing lunatics do their all to shrink
the government and the economy and any future we have for common
welfare or even civilization. Supposedly Obama offers some sort of
last ditch protection against the worst but all too often he seems
downright eager to double-cross us. I mean, first he surrenders to
Republican blackmail, then he tries to frame his cowardice as some
sort of historic accomplishment. In some ways, he's even worse than
his predecessor: after all, Republicans as recently as G.W. Bush
insisted that the best way to pump up a sluggish economy was a big
dose of deficit spending. The preceding isn't exactly what Leonard
says here -- it's more my rant. What Leonard says is more like:

We don't actually know yet exactly what's in the budget deal. But
suppose just this much is true -- Democrats prevented Republicans
from defunding healthcare reform and crippling the EPA's ability
to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions. If you regard those things
as important -- increasing healthcare coverage for Americans and
combating the challenge of climate change -- then maybe it's OK to
risk a short-term hit to the economy, or even the perception that
you lost a game of government-shutdown chicken with the Republicans.

But if that's true, shouldn't the President be declaring that he
saved healthcare reform from the Republicans rather than trying to
take credit for budget cuts that he and his economic advisers know
are a bad idea? Because even if you make the case that Democrats did
salvage some kind of win by preventing Republicans from getting what
they really, really want -- and make no mistake, I'm pretty sure the
GOP would rather repeal healthcare reform than cut $40 billion from
the budget -- this whole recently concluded drama is just the first
skirmish in a long battle.

Next up is sure to be an even more bruising struggle over the debt
ceiling. Two days ago, Speaker of the House John Boehner declared at
a fundraiser that "I can tell you this: There will not be an increase
in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it."
If the budget proposal released last week by House Budget Committee
chairman Paul Ryan is any indication, that could mean anything from
privatizing Medicare to decimating Medicaid to a (suicidal) balanced-budget
constitutional amendment.

Actually, I have to admit that while this charade was going on, I
always assumed that raising the debt limit would be part of the deal --
not something to start fighting about next week. I'm not sure that many
Democrats aren't enjoying this extended squabble as much as the Republicans:
it does, after all, create an endless stream of campaign sound bites that
Democrats can run on in 2012. And that's in marked contrast to 2010, when
the Democrats actually had some accomplishments to boast about (and many
more to campaign for if they could overcome Republican intransigence and
the moneyed special interests) and utterly fumbled the opportunity. It
seems impossible to campaign on making things better, much easier to run
against making them much worse.

President Obama's speech today was reminiscent of Stalin's Order Number
227 to the Russian generals at the Battle of Stalingrad: "Not One Step
Backward."

Oh, was it? Was it reminiscent of Stalin's Order Number 227?

Tammy Bruce and Neil Cavuto were not impressed. Rush Limbaugh's less
talented brother brought up socialism, of course.

The Washington Examiner pointed out that Barack Obama tricked Paul Ryan
into releasing his plan first, so that Obama could criticize it -- unfair! --
and, even worse, he "resorted to Huey Long tactics by making a punching bag
of 'the rich,' that mythical top 2 percent of all Americans whose wealth the
president famously told Joe the Plumber in 2008 that he just wanted to
'spread around.'" Did you know that rich people are a myth?

Interesting to see Huey Long crop up here. I've been thinking about
renaming my long-delayed book Share the Wealth.

But the politics of tax increases are particularly fraught in a country as
unequal as America. As the Economist points out, in unequal societies,
"social insurance is perceived as redistributing income over the population,
rather than across time." In European countries, which have much lower
income inequality and largely depend on broad-based tax systems, people
expect to utilize the services they're funding at some point; in America,
people think they're writing checks to some deadbeat. Indeed, the right
loves to point out that people in the highest tax bracket pay a
disproportionately high share of taxes, which to them is evidence that
the left is a party of welfare queens who feel entitled to "other people's
money." Likewise, the New York Times' survey of Tea Party supporters found
a movement of relatively well-off people who believe the government favors
the poor. And, of course, the racial undertones to discussions about
welfare and entitlements in America serve to heighten tensions still
further.

Last week's government shutdown threat was just their latest attempt to
send us spiraling further into a morass of inchoate discontent and outright
hostility to the plight of those in need, not to mention endangering an
economy in fragile recovery. Attaining $38 billion in budget cuts at the
expense of the poor and no cost to corporate America, it is, as President
Obama himself said, "The biggest annual spending cut in history."

At the same time we were inflicted with House Budget Committee Chairman
Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity," a long-term budget proposal that would
slash $6.2 trillion over the next decade, take money away from education
and alternative energy investments, privatize Medicare, cut healthcare
services for seniors and the disabled, radically alter Medicaid, but keep
funding a bloated defense industry, subsidies for oil companies and tax
breaks for the nation's richest.

I thought Ryan didn't say anything about defense, which of course
leaves him open to the above statement. On the other hand, he wants to
cut taxes on corporations and the rich even further, so he don't really
ever gets any budget savings, except through what Winship calls "magical
thinking at its worst, a hocus-pocus of numbers adrift from reality."

For the last two months the root of my own right median nerve has been held
in a vice grip -- a high grade central canal stenosis, to be precise.

With physical therapy and narcotics, I've tried to ward off the evil
effects of curse-inducing pain coursing through my arm -- even though the
pain kept repeating the same message. If there's one thing that with
absolute consistency aggravates this condition, it's stretching my hand
over a keyboard. The message is: stop typing.

From a distance, blogs seem like mass phenomena, but behind each one
is an individual, often one very stressed to contribute and vulnerable
to all sorts of faults -- Maxine Udall's blog vanished recently when
the author suddenly died, Billmon's when the author decided he couldn't
maintain the work log. This news cuts pretty close to me because I have
all sorts of strange pains in both wrists, a situation that has been
worsening over the last year. Doesn't bother me as much right now as
the allergies, but I can imagine not being able to do what I do not so
far in the future.

Facebook Comments

Paul Krugman has a quote on Ayn Rand's influence: "There are two
novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord
of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy
that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes,
leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable
to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

The anti-Ayn Rand piece is on a blog called Filthy Liberal Scum,
which leads off with a memorable quote from Justin Rosario:

Take any conservative position on a social or economic issue and
boil away all the rhetoric and what you are left with is 'I got mine,
screw you.'

Unfortunately, the website doesn't do anything except redirect you
to this quote. The articles published under it must be searched out
more ingeniously.

Closeout Shopping

I had a friend once who claimed to have actually read every book on
his shelves. Actually, that was a slight exaggeration: he lamented that
he had fallen behind recently. His boast/lament reflected a trope that
I had seen in movies or TV (don't recall which or where): a workingman
enters a house, sees a wall-sized bookshelf, and says something like,
"wow, you've read all those books?" It's a giveaway that the workingman
had no intellectual airs, because anyone intellectual enough to collect
all those books would have long since disavowed even plans to read them
all. (A false lead, as I recall.) Anyhow, my friend had dropped out of
college to organize the masses, so it mattered to him that he not have
any more books than he had read (or would soon).

Even then, I had vast numbers of books that I would undoubtedly
never read. Some I picked at on occasion. Many just wound up on the
shelves, unclear even what idea had inspired their purchase. When
I went to college in St. Louis, at least a thousand books stayed in
the attic back in Wichita. When I moved to New York, more had to be
left behind. In the last ten years I've been reading more, and I've
finally gotten to where I buy fewer books that I'm unlikely to ever
get to. On the other hand, I very likely had a minor lapse last
week, as the local Borders closeout dropped prices to the point
where microeconomics got the better of judgment.

In other words, I bought things that I wouldn't have paid more
for, on the theory that what I bought has some marginal likelihood
of being useful -- consulted if not fully read, read eventually if
not very soon. I thought it might make an interesting post to unpack
and parade those purchase past you. Gives me a chance to articulate
what (if anything) I was thinking. Here goes:

Diane Ackerman: A Natural History of the Senses
(1990; paperback, 1995, Vintage Books): A natural science book with
cultural overtones, organized around the five senses. I've picked
this up and thumbed through it for ages now. It's the sort of book
I used to read a lot before 2001 kicked me into a more political
orbit.

J.D. Biersdorfer/David Pogue: iPod: The Missing Manual
(9th edition, paperback, 2011, O'Reilly): OK, this is probably stupid,
but I have pretty much decided I should get an MP3 player, everyone I
know recommends Apple (a company I've long despised -- I was, before
all, an Apple II owner, and I've had a long run of avoiding ever making
that mistake again), and I'm really confused about different models,
features, how they work, what they're good for, etc. List price this
would be a ridiculous purchase, but it wound up costing far less than
the sales tax on the machine.

Bryan Burrough: The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the
Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes (2009; paperback, 2010, Penguin
Books): The Big Four: Roy Cullen, H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, Sid
Richardson. Made their money through politics more than geology,
and never forgot that. Worst influence America ever had was oil
money in politics.

Ha-Joon Chang: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About
Capitalism (2011, Bloomsbury Press): Development economist,
student of Joseph Stiglitz, doesn't buy the neoliberal prescription --
wrote two books about that, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development
Strategy in Historical Perspective and Bad Samaritans: The
Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. I've
read the latter. Not a Marxist anti-capitalist; just one who's
grown tired of seeing his and similar nations kicked around.

Morris Dickstein: Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History
of the Great Depression (2009; paperback, 2010, Norton):
Don't know how low-brow it goes, but even if this covers the elite
arts and a bit more this well-regarded history could be useful --
the culture in question is the one before the one I grew up in,
the one my parents grew up in (even if they were intentionally
indifferent to it). I've been increasingly interested in the 1930s,
mostly politics and the economy, but this fits in too.

Will Friedwald: A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and
Pop Singers (2010, Pantheon): Big reference book, 811 pages,
double columns, looks like a couple pages or more on hundreds of
singers (e.g., six on Carmen McRae). Friedwald has been carving out
this turf as his own for quite a while now. I don't much care for
his taste or his writing, but for a reference book this is probably
as expert as Scott Yanow on trumpet players or swing.

Daniel Walker Howe: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation
of America, 1815-1848 (2007; paperback, 2009, Oxford University
Press): Part of the multi-volume Oxford History of America series. I
recently picked up David M. Kennedy's Freedom From Fear: The American
People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 thinking that era is pivotal
for understanding postwar America (not that we've ever actually managed
to get over the thrill of WWII), but it occurs to me that every book in
the series is likely to be valuable, and the 1815-1848 period is one
that I know relatively little about.

Cicily Janus: The New Face of Jazz: An Intimate Look at
Today's Living Legends and the Artists of Tomorrow (paperback,
2010, Billboard Books): About 200 short biographies, some of folks
I've never heard of, most I know a little bit; missing are some big
names (the only Marsalis is Delfeayo, which gives you an idea of how
narrowly tuned the selection is), practically everyone in free jazz
and/or Europe. I think this will prove more frustrating than not,
but I do have reasons for piling up reference books like this.

Judith Jones: The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
(2007; paperback, 2008, Anchor): Also a publishing memoir, from
the editor best known for Julia Child's Mastering the Art of
French Cooking, although that merely started off a long list
of superb cookbooks -- Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking
is the most intensely used in my kitchen, with Marcella Hazan's
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking in the running.
(I belatedly purchased the first Child volume, but have yet to
make anything out of it. I own several Claudia Rodens, but have
only used The Book of Jewish Food much.) Another meta
book, plus it has recipes.

Robin D.G. Kelley: Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of
an American Original (2009; paperback, 2010, Free Press):
More about Monk than I want to know, but he is a pivotal character
in the history of modern jazz, and I should know more than I do.

Sandra Newman/Howard Mittlemark: Read This Next: 500 of the
Best Books You'll Ever Read (paperback, 2010, Harper): Much
of what I learned, especially early on, came from reading critics
and reviewers, even anthologizers -- there is no more cost-effective
way to pick up the semblance of an education. I have a few other
books like this (and, of course, dozens and dozens of music guides),
so it seemed very likely that this would be worth the pittance it
cost. (Looking at it again, I'm not so sure.)

David Remnick: The Bridge: The Life and Times of Barack
Obama (2010; paperback, 2011, Vintage): Seems inevitable
that sooner or later I'll have to wade through an Obama biography.
This seems like the leading candidate, although I'm already skeptical
about Remnick's notion that Obama is picking up where the civil
rights movement left off.

Nir Rosen: Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's
Wars in the Muslim World (2010, Nation Books): Whereas the
first round of Iraq War books were very critical of the US in Iraq,
access to information was increasingly constrained from 2004 on, so
when books finally came out on the Surge they were invariably the
work of favored hawks. Rosen is the exception, the only journalist
able to look at the war from multiple angles, and as Afghanistan
loomed ever larger he moved around there too.

Alex Ross: Listen to This (2010, Farrar Straus and
Giroux): This was a stretch. Classical music critic at The New
Yorker -- long-time subscriber, but I can't say as I recall him
much there, probably my lifelong aversion to classical music. Would
have preferred a paperback of his previous The Rest Is Noise,
but there were none, and as I started poking around here, I was
impressed by the writing and not turned off by the argument. Some
point I may get around to redressing my hatred of classical music
(a term he hates, by the way); in any case it's less painful to
read about than to listen to, and there's some other music tucked
into the cracks here. A long shot.

Tony Russell: Country Music Originals: The Legends and the
Lost (2007; paperback, 2010, Oxford University Press): Big
format, two columns, some pictures, short bios of country stars from
Eck Robertson to Rose Maddox, some unknown to me, most little known
to anyone. Russell wrote Country Music Records: A Discography,
1921-1942, which I've had on my Amazon wish list for ages --
the problem being that it costs $120; also co-wrote The Penguin
Guide to Blues Recordings, which I have but have yet to do much
with.

Expert Comments

On Rainbow Arabia/Britney Spears:

Several things:

I don't make any decisions about grades on the website. If/when Christgau
wants a grade change, he needs to tell me. A side comment or even a ranking
on a Dean's List doesn't get me to do anything. There are many cases where
I added an album entry/review without a grade. Should be some way to list
them -- uh, looks like /get_gl.php?g= does the trick. Probably some things
there he could easily grade if he wanted to, like Youssou N'Dour:
Egypt.

I did make a change to the Britney Spears title: Femme Fatale
(Deluxe Edition). This follows what we did with M.I.A.: Maya,
exactly the same pricing scam. I prefer brackets but went with the
precedent.

I didn't even bother playing the extra cuts, since buying them
would have cost me $5 more than the $8 I paid for the core album.
Had I got a promo I might have thought differently. I couldn't keep
the business and art separate in my review -- something about the
artist makes me think money matters. I was really on the cusp about
the album. Interesting that Christgau decided Blackout the
better album. I only heard it on Rhapsody, gave it a high B+, and
figured this one -- which I played a lot more -- must be better, so
that helped nudge the grade up. Didn't occur to me to go back and
recheck.

My 2011 metafile is already up to 805 albums, but Radio Arabia
hadn't made the list, despite a 2-28 release date. Seems like I've
seen a review or two, but nothing registered. The new album isn't
on Rhapsody now, but I'm enjoying an older EP. Makes me question
the whole metafile utility, since I'm not all that interested in
what other people think. Fwiw, the top rated albums now are: PJ
Harvey, James Blake, Destroyer, Yuck, Iron and Wine; TV on the
Radio is #7 and moving up; Radiohead is tied for #9 with Elbow,
Lykke Li, and Mogwai (which somehow seems almost poetic).

The bullet list widget on the editor box wouldn't work with cut
and paste, so I wound up dropping the bullets and doing each item
as a paragraph. Then Microsoft's spam filter rejected the message.
I chopped it up into pieces. It all went through except for the
last line, which passed once I had changed Lykke Li to "L----- L-"
and Mogwai to "M-----"; I tried the offending names in a separate
post and they went through OK. Seriously sick piece of software
they're using.

Rhapsody Streamnotes (April 2011)

Billy Bang (1947-2011)

William Vincent Walker, better known as jazz violinist Billy Bang,
died yesterday. Lung cancer. I read that he had it last summer -- the
thought weighed on me as I listened to Bang's Prayer for Peace,
ultimately my favorite record of
2010. In the end, the record felt
like the summation of Bang's remarkable career. Before him, violin
had a scattered exposure in jazz -- Stephane Grappelli and Joe Venuti
were sidekicks of famous guitarists (Django Reinhardt and Eddie Lang),
Ray Nance was a trumpeter who played it like a parlor trick, Stuff
Smith was an r&b guy who fiddled on the side, Leroy Jenkins took
an abstract avant-garde turn; we might as well throw in John Cale's
viola, which showed what electricity could do. Bang brought all of
that together. He was never a mainstream, let alone popular, figure --
Regina Carter has easily topped him in Downbeat's polls -- but
among those who heard him he was as synonymous and domineering with
his instrument as Steve Lacy was with soprano sax.

I don't have time to do a full appreciation, but I've written a
fair amount about him in the past, and I'm not alone. Some links:

Tom Hull: Billy Bang Is in the House: Archive version of my
Village Voice article (shorter published version
here).
Also includes notes collected at the time, a discography, and a
"Mini-CG" which I'll wind up with below.

What I can do is to pull out my 2005-vintage Mini-CG, and paste on
some extra entries from later Jazz Consumer Guides. Good at least for
a taste of this remarkable musicians, who remains for me a subject
for future research:

A Billy Bang Mini-CG

Here's a quick rundown of the Billy Bang albums I'm familiar with.
This covers about half of what I would cover if I had everything to
choose from, with most of the spottiness in the early years. Among
the missing are four of five String Trio of New York albums, two albums
on Soul Note, several self-released items on Amina, his early Dennis
Charles duo Bangception, more work with Kahil El'Zabar, a CIMP
Spirits Gathering, bass duos with John Lindberg and William Hooker,
his Forbidden Planet project, more sidework (Frank Lowe, Marilyn Crispell,
Sun Ra, Ronald Shannon Jackson, others), a recent David Taylor-Steve Swell
project where he's one of three strings behind the trombones, and so
forth.

String Trio of New York: First String (1979,
Black Saint): This has come to be viewed as bassist John Lindberg's
group, although guitarist James Emery has also remained a constant.
But over 26 years the violinists have shuffled in and out: Billy Bang,
Charles Burnham, Regina Carter, Diane Monroe, Rob Thomas. Here on
their first album, each member wrote one piece, with Lindberg's
sweeping "East Side Suite" filling up one LP side, while Bang and
Emery split the other side. Bang's piece makes me wonder how much
he had listened to East Asian violin, as it already evinces the
distinctive sonority of the East. B+

John Lindberg Quintet: Dimension 5 (1981 [1982],
Black Saint): The String Trio of New York bassist expands his
pallette, working with Hugh Ragin on trumpet and Marty Ehrlich
on alto sax and flute. The pieces are complex and abstract --
take some attention to follow, and don't always cohere. Bang is
impressive on his solos, helpful otherwise. B+

Billy Bang Quintet: Rainbow Gladiator (1981,
Soul Note): Not his debut, but in many ways his coming out party.
Charles Tyler and Michelle Rosewoman compete for front-line space,
and the interplay is exhilarating more often than not. A-

Billy Bang: Sweet Space/Untitled Gift (1979-82
[2005], 8th Harmonic Breakdown, 2CD): Two early albums reflecting
the New York loft scene. The first is a septet with three horns
up front, parrying off simple vamps with featured Frank Lowe the
main threat. Bang takes a couple of turns with the horns, but
mostly fills in. The second album is a quartet with Don Cherry
on pocket trumpet. The smaller group leaves Bang much more space,
and his tone and attack have become much more distinctive. Both
records are exhilarating. A-

Billy Bang Quartet: Valve No. 10 (1988 [1991],
Soul Note): "September 23rd" is one of Bang's most striking
forays into spoken word, with its fractured jazz background at
one point breaking into a chant of "a love supreme." Sirone
sounds big on bass. Frank Lowe sounds restrained, like he's
working inside the tradition rather than trying to knock it
down -- one of his tastiest performances. Dennis Charles is
as steady as ever. "Bien-Hoa Blues" has a bit of Vietnam in it.
A-

Billy Bang With Sun Ra, John Ore, Andrew Cyrille: A Tribute
to Stuff Smith (1992 [1993], Soul Note): A rare piece of
repertory in Bang's discography. It's interesting to think of Smith
as the mainstream counterpart to Leroy Jenkins in Bang's background,
but he came to Smith later, possibly through the pianist here. Not
breathtaking, but certainly a delight. A-

Billy Bang: Commandment (For the Sculpture of Alain Kirili)
(1997, No More): A solo showcase for a gallery opening. The cover photos
show him standing in the midst of Kirili's abstract thigh-high sculptures,
like he's serenading midgets. Lack of a drummer leaves him ambling a bit,
but his radical deconstruction of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" is memorable,
and his introductions are disarming. B

Billy Bang: Bang On! (1997, Justin Time): Some
standards ("Sweet Georgia Brown," "Yesterdays," "Willow Weep for
Me") to go with Sun Ra and a batch of originals, all played with
formidable intensity. No horns, nothing to detract from the violin
except D.D. Jackson's rough-hewn piano. A-

Rader Schwarz Group: The Spirit Inside Us (1998,
Timbre): Abbey Rader is a drummer who developed in the SoHo lofts
before heading to Europe, where he hitched a ride in Gunter Hampel's
big band. Gunter Schwarz is a tenor saxophonist with no other credits
that I'm aware of, but he matches up well with Rader. Zam Johnson
contributes some electronic squelch to go with Ed Schuller's bass
and Bang's violin. It all makes for a nicely balanced, somewhat
understated set of free jazz. B+

Kahil El'Zabar/Billy Bang: Spirits Entering (1998
[2001], Delmark): A duo with the Chicago omnipercussionist, whose
everyday-from-everywhere beats form a fascinating backdrop. Bang
has played with El'Zabar frequently since 1994's Big Cliff,
but has rarely enjoyed so much space, and responds with touching
eloquence. A-

Billy Bang: Big Bang Theory (1999 [2000], Justin
Time): This may be the least avant group Bang has worked with --
Curtis Lundy and Cody Moffett are pros who mostly lean toward hard
bop, while unknown pianist Alexis Hope sounds forthright without
betraying any particular predelictions. The song selection tries
out various directions without settling on any one. Short takes of
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "One for Jazz" -- Bang's poem for
his longtime drummer Dennis Charles -- are more lushly orchestrated
than they are elsewhere in Bang's oeuvre. But the one that comes
together strongest is "Little Sunflower," the closer penned by
Freddie Hubbard. So hard bop wins out in the end.
B+

Abbey Rader/Billy Bang: Echoes (1999, Abray):
Rader gets top billing because this came out on his label. Bang
wrote all but one of the songs, and leads throughout -- even
recites his poem for Dennis Charles. Still, the drums help to
pace and steady the violinist, and they add the echoes of the
title. B+

Frank Lowe/Billy Bang Quartet: One for Jazz (2001,
No More): A quarter century past their initial collaborations, two
years before Lowe's death, this is a group at home with itself,
playing music that only outsiders might view as on the edge. So
much of their personalities come through in the music that it's
a rare pleasure just to kick back and listen. A-

Billy Bang: Vietnam: The Aftermath (2001, Justin
Time): Bang writes, "This project has been in my mind for at least
thirty years. . . . At night, I would experience severe nightmares
of death and destruction, and during the day, I lived a kind of
undefined ambiguous daydream." Bang did a year stretch in Vietnam,
in infantry, out in the boondocks, a black man killing yellow men
for the delusions of some white men in Washington. Given all this
background, I suppose the Far East vamp of "Yo! Ho Chi Minh Is in
the House" can be pretty spooky. Certainly, it doesn't take much
imagination to be creeped out by "TET Offensive." Bang's violin has
always been haunted by an oriental tone, but here it comes into its
own, and he works it hard. Aside from Bang, the key person here is
conductor Butch Morris, who holds a large group together in tight
formation. The record of a lifetime. A

William Parker Violin Trio: Scrapbook (2002 [2003],
Thirsty Ear): The program here is a new set of Parker pieces based on
reminiscences -- dressing for church, watching children in colorful
clothes. There's remarkable music throughout, interesting rhythms,
striking phasing between bass and violin. Parker's intro to "Holiday
for Flowers" is a good example of his virtuosity, but Bang's violin
stars throughout. This may be the single best example of his sound
and dynamics. A

F.A.B. (Fonda-Altschul-Bang): Transforming the Space
(2003, CIMP): His fans have been known to tout this trio record as the
real, unadulterated Billy Bang, and they have a point, up to a point:
this trio is a typical jazz showcase for Bang's work, especially as an
improviser. This is also a strong outing for Barry Altschul and Joe
Fonda, although CIMP's finicky audiophile mix can make it tricky to
get the volume right to bring out the details in Fonda's bass.
A-

Billy Bang: Vietnam: Reflections (2004 [2005],
Justin Time): Second installment to what's now been reconceived as
a trilogy. The music is more open, relaxed, generous than on its
precedessor -- the contrast opens up a broader vista of Vietnam
than the necessarily limited view seen by US soldiers. Several
pieces are reworked Vietnamese traditionals, and two musicians
are Vietnamese-Americans: Co Boi Nguyen sings on three pieces,
and Nhan Thanh Ngo plays dan tranh (related to the dulcimer).
A-

Ahmed Abdullah's Ebonic Tones: Tara's Song (2004 [2005],
TUM): Four of five musicians here are Sun Ra alumni, including Bang,
who shines on his solos and fills in otherwise. The odd man out is
Alex Harding on baritone sax. Abdullah plays robust trumpet and sings
two Sun Ra lyrics, plus a note perfect "Iko Iko" that appears out of
nowhere to close. A-

Sirone Bang Ensemble: Configuration (2004 [2005],
Silkheart): A live recording from CBGB's in New York, the sound a
bit thin and hollow, the applause real but hardly rapturous -- not
a real jazz venue, I guess. But the pairing of the Revolutionary
Ensemble bassist with violinist Bang was meant to generate lots
of friction, and for good measure they brought along Charles Gayle,
who for once blows within the limits of his name, as opposed to his
usual hurricane force. Perhaps in honor of the venue, there's a
certain rockishness to their approach. In particular, "Freedom
Flexibility" works a call-and-response motif where straight lines
are answered freely. Don't know where they found drummer Tyshawn
Sorey, but he has a blast. A-

Kahil El'Zabar's Ritual Trio: Live at the River East Art
Center (2004 [2005], Delmark): Bang guests with the trio
in this remembrance of late-member Malachi Favors (Yosef Ben Israel
fills the empty slot), and adds cutting counterpoint to Ari Brown's
tenor sax. As usual, I could do without El'Zabar's singing (let
alone his preaching). B+

Billy Bang Quintet Featuring Frank Lowe: Above &
Beyond (2003 [2007], Justin Time):
The fire-breathing tenor saxophonist was down to one lung here,
so out of breath by the end of the gig the promoter wanted to
call an ambulance. Lowe died a few months later, leaving this
as his last testament. All upbeat, with hard piano and swinging
fiddle. Lowe makes up in clarity what he lacks in volume, his
pleasure staving off the pain.
A-

The Roy Campbell Ensemble: Akhenaten Suite
(2007 [2008], AUM Fidelity)
The two multi-part suites are hard to gauge as Egyptology, but
their depth of feeling are palpable. Billy Bang's violin carries
most of the load, the backdrop for Bryan Carrott's eccentric vibes
and Campbell's avant-twisted trumpet -- shades of Gillespie moving
ever deeper into African myth. The closing "Sunset on the Nile"
is lighter and gentler, the river of life.
A-

Billy Bang: Prayer for Peace (2005 [2010], TUM):
Back from his second tour of Vietnam, wherein he found peace
in transcendent musical fusion, the violinist reflects on the
dawn of apocalypse, Hiroshima 1945. Even there, the chill
gradually gives way to the fire of one of his trademark riffs,
then segues into another from Compay Segundo. Joy all around,
from Stuff Smith well beyond Sun Ra, with James Zollar's tart
trumpet challenging Bang's razor-sharp violin.
A

I got a phone call from a publicist a couple years ago and somewhere
along the line he made an observation that my taste in jazz was really
rooted in the black avant-garde of the late 1970s, especially David
Murray and Billy Bang. Not his words -- I can't reconstruct those, but
it was a thought I had never considered (and was in sharp contrast to
flack I had been receiving about all the white musicians I'd been
writing about). It certainly is true that I've singled Murray and
Bang out: that I've not only praised them frequently but I've written
extensive career reviews on both: for Bang, see my 2005 Village Voice
piece,
Billy Bang Is in the House
(link is to my archive copy, which has a longer version of the piece
plus notes, discography, and a "Mini-CG"); for Murray, I did a Voice
Jazz Supplement piece in 2006,
David Murray: A Consumer
guide. (While I'm thinking of it, I might as well throw out a
link to my
William Parker/Matthew
Shipp Consumer Guide, published at Static in 2003 where I
could be a good deal more verbose and expansive; Shipp is younger,
but Parker is a contemporary to Murray and Bang, actually a good
deal closer to Bang.)

Expert Comments

On Billy Bang:

Usually when a jazz musician dies my mailbox is full of it, but Billy
Bang never had that kind of publicity -- so I found out about Bang's
death here, thanks to Christopher Monsen. I thought I should write a
few words, then thought I don't have time, then found an unpublished
"Mini-CG" (actually, not even so mini) and tacked on some other bits
I had written, some links, a brief intro. Even had an album cover scan.
Up on my blog now.

Btw, a couple days ago I found some of David Murray's DIWs that
I had missed up on Rhapsody, so I've been catching up. Didn't find
anything new that cracks my top ten although Lovers is nearly
as good as everything else recorded in Jan. 1988, and Death of a
Sideman and Love and Sorrow and In Our Style are
awfully good. Searching for missing Bang's now. Turns out The
Fire From Within is misfiled under Ahmed Abdullah.

Music Week

Peter Brötzmann/Fred Van Hove/Han Bennink/Plus Albert Mangelsdorff:
Live in Berlin '71 (1971, FMP, 2CD): The tenor sax and
trombone blister and bluster but at least back off part on occasion
to let something develop; Bennink is credited with a long list of
percussion including the catchall "home-made junk"; he dazzles on
his own, as does pianist Van Hove when the thunder breaks; even the
noise can be wondrous for a while, but it does go on too long.
B+(**) [destination-out.com]

Peter Brötzmann/Misha Mengelberg/Han Bennink: 3 Points and
a Mountain . . . Plus (1979 [1999], FMP, 2CD): Carefully balanced,
with each player writing three songs, much space for the piano without
Brötzmann blowing it out of the water, and as wide a range of sax and
clarinet as you're likely to find -- although note that at least some
of the tenor sax and clarinet is Bennink; a lot of fascinating bits,
but a long haul to put them all together.
B+(***) [destination-out.com]

Rüdiger Carl: Zwei Quintette (1987 [1988], FMP):
Below the title line: "Two Compositions by Rüdiger Carl"; the two
pieces run 40:41 and 36:28, originally on two LPs, not sure that
there's even been a CD reissue; Carl plays tenor sax and clarinet,
along with Philip Wachsmann (violin, electronics), Stephan Wittwer
(guitar, more electronics), Irčne Schweizer (piano), and bass;
the first (40:41) piece keeps a repeated riff in play with minor
variations, never less than enchanting; the second (36:28) starts
stuck in ambient mud, takes a while before more strenuous sax
manages to dislodge it.
B+(**) [destination-out.com]

Globe Unity Special '75: Rumbling (1975 [1991],
FMP): Alexander von Schlippenbach's avant-orchestra, formed back
around 1967, cut down to an octet here (plus a dog, unnamed in
the credits) -- Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, and Gerd Dudek on reeds;
Kenny Wheeler and Albert Mangelsdorff on brass; Peter Kowald and
Paul Lovens rounding out the rhythm section; starts with a Misha
Mengelberg march, portending mischief, and ends with Lacy on Monk;
in between abstract sounds improbably colliding for something
more than noise.
B+(***) [destination-out.com]

Steve Lacy & Even Parker: Chirps (1985 [1991],
FMP): The two giants of modern soprano sax in a duo; I would have expected
more stylistic clash, but they're very attentive to each other, up
and down and in and out, more like birds dancing than chirping; of
course, the sonics are limited to the instrument, which is difficult
to play and difficult to listen to over the long haul.
B+(**) [destination-out]

Noah Howard Group: Berlin Concert (1975 [1977], FMP):
Group includes a pianist I've never heard of (Takashi Kako), bass,
drums, and percussion; don't have the song credits, but "Olé" would
be Coltrane's, and the alto saxophonist shows more inclination to
take the Trane than anything else; toward the end he dominates the
album and it just lifts up and sails away.
B+(***) [destination-out]

The Noah Howard Quartet: Schizophrenic Blues
(1977 [1978], FMP):
Alto saxophonist from New Orleans, may be why he never
lost his party sense even while testing the limits of ESP-Disk's
"only the artist decides" rule; rools the upper registers with Itaru
Oki's trumpet never far behind, and sounds like he's been listening
to then-recent Ornette Coleman.
A- [destination-out]

Noah Howard Quartet (1966 [1993], ESP-Disk): Short
(29:35) debut album for the New Orleans-bred alto saxophonist, with
Ric Colbeck on trumpet and bass-drums players I've never run into
again; Colbeck, who had one album and two more side-credits by 1970,
jousts gamely with Howard; note that Rhapsody has this album listed
under its last song title, "And About Love."
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

David Murray: NYC 1986 (1986 [1995], DIW): Another
snapshot from a memorable year -- started with I Want to Talk About
You and ended with The Hill; a quartet, of course, but with
guitarist James Blood Ulmer on guitar instead of the usual piano, Fred
Hopkins on bass and Sunny Murray on drums; sound is a little muffled,
but the tenor sax has no problem breaking through.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

David Murray Quintet: Remembrances (1990 [1991],
DIW): Cover suggests this is child's play, and indeed this is exceptionally
light and lively, with Hugh Ragin's trumpet dicing with Murray's tenor
sax, and pianist Dave Burrell mixing some boogie into the rhythm section;
less explicit about its place in the tradition than Tenors or
Sax Men, except on "Dexter's Dues."
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

David Murray: Death of a Sideman (1991 [2000], DIW):
Featuring Bobby Bradford, who preceded Don Cherry in Ornette Coleman's
quartet, had a long collaboration with John Carter up to his death in
1991, wrote all the songs here, plays trumpet; with Coleman alum Ed
Blackwell on drums, Murray regulars Dave Burrell and Fred Hopkins on
piano and bass; poignant, profound.
A- [Rhapsody]

David Murray Octet: Picasso (1992 [1995], DIW): The
title comes from a Coleman Hawkins piece, but where Hawk recorded the
first landmark tenor sax solo, Murray wraps a seven-slice suite around
the idea and fleshes it out with five horns and some dazzling Dave
Burrell piano; not as jarring or protean as earlier octets like
Ming, the sense of motion and flow is flush throughout.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Sam Rivers: Portrait (1995 [1997], FMP): A solo
showcase: first surprise is that he starts off on piano and makes
a credible showing; moves on to tenor sax (mostly), soprano sax,
flute, and finally back to piano; it's tough to make solo anything
work, much less tenor sax, but he's steady and ingenious throughout.
B+(*) [destination-out]

Alexander von Schlippenbach: The Living Music
(1969 [2002], Atavistic): A septet, more a stripped down version of Globe
Unity Orchestra than anything else, with two brass (Manfred Schoof
on cornet, Paul Rutherford on trombone), two reeds (Peter Brötzmann
on tenor sax, Michel Pilz on bass clarinet, both on bari sax), enough
horn power to raise the roof, with the piano-bass-drums tending to
slash and bang, quite dramatic but surprisingly coherent, breaking
new ground.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Schlippenbach Quartet: Hunting the Snake (1975
[2000], Atavistic): Really unheard music, broadcast on Radio Bremen then shelved
for a quarter century; with Peter Kowald on bass on top of the pianist's
regular trio -- saxophonist Evan Parker and percussionist Paul Lovens --
for four 20-minute (two more, two less) pieces; somewhat unfocused as a
whole, but each player does remarkable things throughout.
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

Schlippenbach Trio: Elf Bagatellen (1990, FMP):
That would be pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, working with Evan
Parker (soprano and tenor sax) and Paul Lovens (drums); Parker's sax
runs scratch at the surface, tearing it down rather than trying to
build something on top -- an effect both self-limiting and bravely
tenacious.
B+(**) [destination-out.com]

Keith Tippett: Mujician I & II (1981-86 [1988],
FMP): Solo piano, cut in two widely separated sessions but pretty
much seamless, mostly fast rhythmic fluttering although some of it
sounds rather fishy, like the piano has been tampered with -- low
parts with a lot of stringy reverb or just lots of rumble, high
crystal clear.
B+(*) [destination-out.com]

Jazz Prospecting (CG #26, Part 12)

Thus ends the winter of our discontent. No idea where that comes
from, but it popped into my mind in wrapping up Jazz Consumer Guide
round number 26. The draft is done, wrapped up, mailed off to the
new Village Voice editor. No idea when it will finally run, but so
far indications are that it will be favorably received. Last one
ran on December 22, so I'm already more than a month late with this
one, and it usually takes at least a month for the Voice to digest
it. Hopefully I can impress the need to make up ground and run the
next one relatively soon. This one has 14 graded albums plus 29 HMs
(5 cut from my A- list) for 1629 words. Most likely some of that
will get cut by the time we're done. Saved for nextime: 12 graded
albums, 46 HMs, 1680 words -- another column's worth, although I'm
thinking now that I should take at least 10 of those HMs and give
up on them. I've fallen behind on processing new stuff, but at least
have made a major dent in the "done" file (graded but unreviewed --
currently down to 22 records).

The final Jazz Prospecting for this round follows. For the round,
I wrote new notes on 227 records and carried 96 others over from
previous rounds. The final Jazz Prospecting file is
here. A new round starts
today. I have 290 albums in the queue, so a lot to do. Sometime in
the next week or so I'll post the surplus file from this round. It
includes a lot of HM-worthy records that I just couldn't figure out
any way to get space for.

Should have a Rhapsody Streamnotes post up tomorrow. While falling
behind on new jazz I've been kicking the rated count up dramatically,
feeding on online sources -- mostly Rhapsody, but also the FMP discs
found at Destination Out. Last night I noticed that Rhapsody now has
most of David Murray's DIW records, including a bunch I had missed, so
I've been picking them off. Upshot is that the ratings count surged
this past week, finally hitting 18,000. I guess that's a milestone,
but I'm not sure for what. Big number, for sure.

Honey Ear Trio: Steampunk Serenade (2010 [2011],
Foxhaven): Erik Lawrence (tenor, baritone, alto, and soprano sax),
Rene Hart (bass, electronics), Allison Miller (drums, percussion).
Miller had a very good record with a completely different trio last
year. Lawrence has been around since at least 1991 without making
any notable impact -- AMG lists a couple dozen side credits, none
I've heard (although I have the latest New York Electric Piano in
the queue). Evidently a lot of Lawrence's bread-and-butter work
comes from touring with Levon Helm. About all I know about Hart
is that he's married to Lawrence's sister, and was involved with
him, Miller, and Steven Bernstein in an "acid jazz" group called
Hipmotism (note to self: check that out). Originals by all three,
including one by Lawrence on Eyjafjallajokull -- last year's top
natural disaster, already so dated. Rigorous sax trio, rough and
tough, except for a touchingly tender "Over the Rainbow."
A-

Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quartet: To Hear From There
(2010 [2011], Patois): Trombonist, from San Francisco, b. 1952, has
eight albums since 2000; side credits go back to the 1970s: r&b,
Latin jazz, Anthony Brown's Asian American Orchestra. Trombone with
piano-bass-drums-percussion; a couple guest vocalists. Originals for
the most part, neatly labelled as jazz-timba or jazz-bolero or Cuban
son-jazz or cha-cha-cha or whatever, with four covers ranging from
Tito Puente to Juan Tizol's "Perdido."
B+(*)

Lynne Arriale: Convergence (2010 [2011], Motéma):
Pianist, b. 1957 in Milwaukee, more than a dozen albums since 1993,
teaches in Jacksonville, FL. Trio, with Omer Avital on bass and
Anthony Pinciotti, expanded on most cuts with tenor saxophonist
Bill McHenry. Half originals, half covers, drawn from the rock
era -- Beatles and Stones to Trent Reznor. She cracks "Here Comes
and Sun" and "Paint It Black" down to melodic fragments which pop
up here and there offering the barest whiff of the songs -- very
effective, nice work by Avital with the sax laying out. McHenry
returns on "Call Me" (Blondie); he mostly gets the upbeat pieces,
and is superb, as usual.
B+(***)

Robert Hurst: Bob Ya Head (2010 [2011], Bebob):
Bassist, b. 1964, side credits kick off around 1986 with Woody Shaw,
Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Donald Brown, and Vincent Herring;
released two records on DIW 1992-93, one on his Bebob label in 2002,
two more this year. A lot of scattered ideas here, mostly tied to
upbeat grooves, the flaring horns of "Alice and John" most impressive;
a couple of cuts feature girlie choruses, not far removed from disco,
but different, of course; "Unintellectual Property" features sound
bites from noted standup comic G.W. Bush; ends with a bass solo.
B+(**)

Robert Hurst: Unrehurst Volume 2 (2007 [2011], Bebob):
Bassist-led piano trio, with Robert Glasper on piano and Chris Dave on
drums. The previous Unrehurst Volume 1 was recorded way back in
2000 and released in 2002, also with Glasper -- must have been quite
young then but I can't find any reference that gives a firm birthdate
(one source says "1979?"). Two Hurst tunes, one by Glasper, one Monk,
one Cole Porter. Skillful but fairly ordinary neobop, nice to mix the
bass up a bit.
B

Soren Moller: Christian X Variations (2009 [2011],
Audial): Christian X was king of Denmark from 1912-47. He was credited
with resisting the Nazis and protecting Danish Jews ("The king declared
that all Danes would wear the Star of David in the event that the Nazis
forced Denmark's Jewish population to do so.") Moller plays piano in
a quartet with Dick Oatts on sax, Josh Ginsburg on bass, and Henry Cole
on drums. The "variations" are organized for quartet or nonet -- the
latter is accomplished by adding the Kirin Winds, a group of classical
wind instrumentalists (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon) which
adds some fancy overtones.
B+(**)

Samir Zarif: Starting Point (2010 [2011], Mythology):
Saxophonist (tenor on 6 cuts, soprano on 3), b. 1980 in Houston, first
album under his own name -- was in a group called The Paislies which
released an album in 2007 (not a very good one). His saxophone work is
consistently impressive here. He also dables in electronics (2 tracks)
and vocals (4 tracks, twice joined by Maria Neckam). The vocals add a
spacey otherness to the record, something I'm rather ambivalent about.
B+(**)

Vlada: All About You (2003-08 [2010], Glad Vlad):
Singer, family Serbian, given name Vladimir Tajsic, raised in Switzerland,
majored in English and economics at University of Zurich, wound up in
Nashville. First album, assembled from band sessions in Switzerland in
2003, 2006-07 sessions in Nashville, and some final touches back in
Switzerland. Tajsic wrote all the tracks, with some lyrical input from
Sonya Hollan. Don't recall why I had filed this under gospel, but there
is a lot of that. Band includes some pop-jazz notables, like Paul Jackson
Jr. and, featured on three cuts, Kirk Whalum. Singer has his idiomatic
English down smooth: my first reaction was that he's listened to a lot
of Smokey Robinson. Backing vocals from part or all of Take 6.
B+(**)

Sean Smith Quartet: Trust (2010 [2011], Smithereen):
Bassist; bio says he "has been an integral part of the international
jazz scene for more than 20 years" but what if anything does that mean?
AMG lists about 15 Sean Smiths; turns out he's the one listed under
Folk, where he's described as "one of the busiest young players on the
international jazz scene." Looks like he has a handful of previous
records going back to 1999, a good deal of side credits -- website
claims over 100 but lists under 20. Wrote all the pieces here. Quartet
includes John Ellis (tenor and soprano sax), John Hart (guitar), and
Russell Meissner (drums). Light and elegant postbop, tasty even.
B+(***)

Elliott Sharp: Binibon (2010 [2011], Henceforth):
B. 1951, plays guitar, synths, a little clarinet and sax; has seventy
or so records since 1977, mostly outside the jazz, rock, or classical
categories. Composed and plays everything here, which is pleasing but
relatively inconsequential. The main point is the spoken word libretto
written by Jack Womack and performed by five characters. Has something
to do with an artsy "cafe and 24-hour hangout at 2nd Avenue and 5th
Street in the East Village . . . during 1979-81" -- too
specific not to be real, too mythic to be remembered precisely. Might
like it more if I followed it better, or might follow it better if I
liked it more.
B+(*)

These are some even quicker notes based on downloading or streaming
records. I don't have the packaging here, don't have the official hype,
often don't have much information to go on. I have a couple of extra
rules here: everything gets reviewed/graded in one shot (sometimes with
a second play), even when I'm still guessing on a grade; the records go
into my flush file (i.e., no Jazz CG entry, unless I make an exception
for an obvious dud). If/when I get an actual copy I'll reconsider the
record.

Erik Lawrence & Hipmotism (2007, CDBaby): CDBaby
describes this as acid jazz, but while most of the songs offer (or can
be adapted to) funk grooves, and the bassist (Rene Hart) and drummer
(Allison Miller) try to go that way for the first half-plus of the album.
The horns have more leeway: the notes cite Lawrence on baritone sax and
Steven Bernstein on slide trumpet; can't swear they stick to them. The
two Lawrence originals break out into relatively free jazz, and their
take on Fats Domino's "Going to the River" is as stretched out as their
Pink Floyd ("Shine On You Crazy Diamond") is compressed. Toward the
end you can feel the future Honey Ear Trio trying to break out.
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

Misha Mengelberg Quartet: Four in One (2000 [2001],
Songlines): Homework, as I try to get some deeper sense of the Dutch
pianist and ICP Orchestra leader. Not much of his several dozen albums
available through Rhapsody, but this item popped up: a quartet with
Dave Douglas on trumpet, Brad Jones on bass, and Han Bennink hitting
things (credit says: percussion). Three Monk pieces in the middle of
a lot of originals, many recycled (Monk-like) from earlier efforts.
The trumpet seems a little thin, but the piano is cagey, darting in
and out unexpectedly.
A- [Rhapsody]

Misha Mengelberg: Senne Sing Song (2005, Tzadik):
Piano trio, produced by John Zorn with Zorn's house rhythm section,
Greg Cohen on bass and Ben Perowsky on drums. Without the strings
and horns of ICP Orchestra to compound his mischief, the pianist
has to step up and carry the tunes, which he does. I don't often
find a review worth quoting, but Dan Warburton at AMG has this one
figured out: "Mengelberg's music remains a quintessential example
of how recognizable idioms -- from Baroque counterpoint to the
Duke-ish left-hand thunks and Monk-ish whole-tone runs -- can be
extended (and subverted) into something both musically profound
and profoundly musical."
A- [Rhapsody]

Han Bennink Trio: Parken (2009, ILK): With Simon
Toldman on piano and Joachim Badenhorst on clarinet/bass clarinet:
their names and instruments are on the cover, following Bennink's,
but most sources attribute as above. The New Dutch Swing idea is
reinforced with three Ellington pieces, passages running wistfully
sweet as well as cacophonous, and some fancy unorthodox drumming.
Ends with the title song with a vocal by Qarin Wikström -- has a
bit of Robert Wyatt flare to it.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Don Pullen: Plays Monk (1984 [2010], Why Not?):
The last pianist to work for Charles Mingus is an odd choice to
play Monk, and I suspect he gave little thought to the project;
he keeps wanting to work in his trademark flourishes, dazzling
of course, but excess baggage especially when playing songs that
hide their odd note choices in a cloak of primitivism.
B [Rhapsody]

Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis: Here We Go Again: Celebrating
the Music of Ray Charles (2009 [2011], Blue Note): Pretty
simple, the Marsalis quintet (Walter Blanding on tenor sax, Dan Nimmer
on piano) play twelve obvious songs from the Charles songbook for a
live audience with Nelson and Norah Jones trading vocals -- sometimes
Jones has a bit of trouble getting on track, but Nelson is always
right in the groove. Nothing wrong with the horns, either. Still, a
pretty unnecessary album.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Patricia Barber: Monday Night: Live at the Green Mill Vol. 2
(2010 [2011], Fast Atmosphere): Appears to be download-only, same for
the first volume which dates back several years. Barber sings and plays
piano, with guitar-bass-drums. Seems under the weather at first, hard to
sort out, but fares better with songs I recognize, closing with her own
"Post Modern Blues" followed by "Smile," "The Beat Goes On," and
"Summertime."
B [Rhapsody]

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.

Dan Tepfer Trio: Five Pedals Deep (2010, Sunnyside):
Piano trio, with Thomas Morgan on bass and Ted Poor on drums. I have
nothing but admiration for the carefully crafted record -- especially
the solo "Body and Soul" at the end -- but also nothing much to say.
Seems unfair, but after 5-6 plays I don't know what else to do.
B+(**)

Todd DelGiudice: Pencil Sketches (2010 [2011], OA2):
Highly improbable sax hero -- put more time into his classical study
than into jazz, hopped around various symphonies, wound up teaching
on the scablands of eastern Washington -- nothing sketchy to his
originals, but the bright lustre to his tone and rich ambience really
come out on the sole cover, "All the Things You Are."
B+(***)

Some re-grades as I've gone through trying to wrap things up and
sort out the surplus:

Benjamin Herman: Hypochestmastreefuzz [Special Edition]
(2008-09 [2010], Dox, 2CD): Playing this a lot, both discs interchangeable,
the only flaws being the Dutch speech at the end of each, although the
Mengelberg interview sounds amusingly loopy, and the live intros shout
out. Found a quote I used in the review, Herman's self-description:
"surf-guitar based, Dutch-impro, cocktail-jazz sort of thing"; Goudsmit
also talks about Dick Dale. Other trivia: on Dutch Wikipedia page, the
list of musicians Herman has played with starts with Candy Dulfer, not
a real avant-garde icon.
[was: A-] A

Tarbaby: The End of Fear (2010, Posi-Tone):
Philadelphia group, mostly. Four cuts are piano trio: Orrin Evans,
Eric Revis, Nasheet Waits); eight add guest horns: Nicholas Payton
(trumpet, 5 cuts), J.D. Allen (tenor sax, 2 cuts), Oliver Lake (alto
sax, 5 cuts, one of the above with all three). I always assumed
this to be Evans' group but I've seen it billed as Nasheet Waits'
Tarbaby; all three write. Previous album had Allen; touring group
includes Stacy Dillard, so I figure this is transitional, trying
to juggle as the group evolves, but the one thing that underscores
is that the concept seems to be sax-piano-bass-drums quartet rather
than trio+horns, and among the former you get the feeling this one
is aiming at the Coltrane Quartet, albeit through the back door.
I never sorted this fully out, but Lake is especially terrific,
giving them an edge they wouldn't have otherwise found, but having
found it they really run with it.
[was: B+(***)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail over the last week:

JD Allen Trio: Victory! (Sunnyside): May 17

Bill Anschell: Figments (Origin)

Bebop Trio (Creative Nation Music): May 17

The Louie Belogenis Trio: Tiresias (Porter): May 17

Ketil Bjřrnstad/Svante Henryson: Night Song (ECM)

François Carrier/Alexey Lapin/Michel Lambert: Inner Spire (Leo)

Chris Dingman: Waking Dreams (Between Worlds Music): advance, June 21

Eldar Djangirov: Three Stories (Masterworks Jazz)

Mathias Eick: Skala (ECM)

Farmers by Nature [Gerald Cleaver, William Parker, Craig Taborn]: Out of This World's Distortions (AUM Fidelity): June 14

Weekend Roundup

Some scattered links I squirreled away during the previous week.
The big story all week was the impending government shutdown, which
John Boehner ducked at the last minute after making everyone look
as bad as possible:

Mark Almond: 100 Years of Bombing Libya:
Here's a charming factoid for your for your party banter: the first
time anyone thought to drop a bomb from an airplane was a pilot
flying over Libya, almost exactly 100 years ago. The pilot flew for
future NATO power Italy, only unified into a nation state a few
decades prior and feverishly trying to make up for being late to
the European imperialist party by grabbing hold of the last few
unclaimed patches of Africa. Also note the subtitle: "The Forgotten
Fascist Roots of Humanitarian Interventionism." Actually, humanitarian
rationales for interventionism predated fascism: King Leopold, in
particular, claimed he intervened in the Congo to end slavery. In
fact, he treated the entire colony as his personal possession, and
innovated new ways of exploiting native labor -- in particular, his
henchmen kidnapped women and children, then traded them for rubber
harvested from the jungle.

The U.S. is not a heavily taxed country, either by comparison to its rich
country peers, or in its own historical post-World War II context. In fact,
our current federal tax burden as measured as a percentage of total GDP is
at a 60-year-low.

But we do have a pretty expensive social welfare safety net -- one that's
getting pricier all the time, as medical costs rise and the population ages.
That math just doesn't work. You can't keep cutting taxes and provide decent
government healthcare. That's just not sustainable. Republicans know this --
and are delighted by it. We're witnessing the final apotheosis of Grover
Norquist's starve-the-beast theory of government. Since the election of
George W. Bush Republicans have been remarkably successful at choking off
the flow of government revenue. When you combine the purposeful reduction
of revenue with the costs of the economic disaster, it's easy to see how
Obama ended up in a bad strategic position.

The vision thing.

But perhaps the most inexplicable aspect of the entire budget debacle
has been President Obama's abject failure to vigorously define, and defend,
his own vision for the future. It's not just that he's been virtually
invisible through the entire course of current-year budget negotiations.
He's also failed to give us any real sense of where he thinks we should
be headed in the future. He has allowed Republicans to define the debate
between the absurd polarities of extreme cuts and slightly-less-extreme
cuts. Revenue increases? Since the tax-cut deal last winter, he's barely
made a peep. When a Republican politician declares that he wants to change
Medicare to a voucher program, a Democratic president should respond
immediately: Not on my watch!

People like me don't say that the Ryan plan is too radical; we say that
it's a fraud. The spending cuts are largely fake, either because they're
just magic asterisks or because they wouldn't survive politically; the
revenue estimates are fake, because they combine huge tax cuts with vague
assurances that extra revenue will be found by closing loopholes. There's
no there there -- except for big tax cuts for the rich and pain for the
poor.

Matthew Yglesias
(Here
We Go Again) sees this, like the 2005 fight against privatizing Social
Security, as a big opportunity for the "progressive blogosphere":

This is just to say that as a progressive blogosphere I think the Social
Security fight was Our Finest Hour, and I'm proud to have been a part of
it, and eager on a personal level to wade back into the fields of battle.

It's certainly a fight that is winnable and possibly teachable, unless
de facto Democratic leader Barrack Obama panics and throws in the towel,
but I still hate having to spend so much time fending off something awful,
time that under more pleasant circumstances could have been spent advocating
something good. Save Medicare, save Obamacare, and you're still stuck with
a system that's insane and dysfunctional.

Joseph E Stiglitz: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%:
First paragraph is all numbers, which I won't bother repeating because
we've all become inured to them. Second paragraph is all about
"marginal-productivity theory" ("a theory that has always been
cherished by the rich"). Nothing else really hits home either,
even though it is all indubitably true. We need to figure out
some way to articulate how and why inequality is bad for you and
me. I suspect that the answer there has less to do with the top
1%, who are out of sight and out of mind mostly because they don't
want anything to do with the likes of us, than with the bottom few
percent. Poverty not only does bad things to them; it also eats
the floor out from under those with a little and even those with
a lot. Stiglitz comes closest here -- again, not the best examples
imaginable, but all true:

America's inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way.
There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect-people
outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means.
Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism
is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The
top 1 percent rarely serve in the military -- the reality is that the
"all-volunteer" army does not pay enough to attract their sons and
daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class
feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed
money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about
the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the
top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance
and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures
we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The
rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the
rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which
drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental
protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the "core" labor
rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what
the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage
competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in
providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good
education, and a clean environment -- things workers care about. But
the top 1 percent don't need to care.

Didn't jot down the links, but last week saw a couple of "friendly
fire" fuck-ups in Libya. There is essentially no way the US can enter
a conflict without killing people on every side -- something to think
about before you send invitations out.

Expert Comments

From Alex Wilson (Japadsfdf):

Tom Hull -- very interesting -- when was the site made? How do you
update it? I am fluent in XHTML, CSS, Perl, Javascript, PHP and XML
(not showing off -- it's dorky). You can always swing me more technical
questions, if you like?

Reply:

Belated reply to Alex (Japad): The Christgau website was built in
September 2001. I had a prototype I built in Wichita, then drove to New
York. Planned on meeting up with Christgau on the 11th, but events out
of our control pushed that back about a week. We worked out the basic
design, set up the site, and pushed some initial files up. I took a
copy of everything Christgau had on computer back with me, converted
it, and started fleshing out the website. Then went on to type up old
clippings I had saved. Joe Yanosik contributed a useful bibliography.
Various people responded to the site by sending in missing pieces and
by catching errors -- the "ack" file has most of those names.

The website is implemented using homebrew PHP with a MySQL database
and the htdig search engine. The graphic design is unchanged from my
original hack prototype. Every so often I get complaints, like comparing
it to DOS, or most recently that it isn't "hot." I keep a master copy
on one of my machines, then update the public site every 2-3 months
with the file changes and the database dump. There are 2475 files now;
database dump is about 10MB (21 tables). Both my machine and the public
webserver are Linux; most of it would work on WampServer except for
some make and shell scripts (no CGI but run from PHP). I've made some
efforts to adapt to HTML and PHP changes, but there's quite a bit of
cruft by now. I use CSS but not XHTML and virtually no Javascript. As
someone who learned all this stuff 10-20 years ago my choice of tools
tends to be archaic, but my main problem isn't figuring out how to do
something; it's figuring out what to do.

When I started this I had a rough idea for a Version 2 which would
be more generally usable, but that never happened. But I do think it
would be a good idea to do some sort of "10th anniversary facelift" --
new skin, maybe some new navigation, not sure whether more interaction
would be a plus or a minus. Would appreciate any suggestions along
those lines. Any more questions on how it all works or what you can
do, probably best to address those to me directly.

Recycled Goods

Downbeat Critics Poll Ballot

From 2003-09 I took as an annual exercise to look at and critique
Downbeat's annual critics poll results. Originally I did this
because I was new to the game and wanted to see what the critics knew
that I didn't -- for instance, the first time I noticed Scott Colley
or Jeremy Pelt or Gregoire Maret was in the poll results. Later on
I did it more because I knew better and enjoyed second-guessing guys
who no doubt made a good deal more money at this than I do. One case
was Jackie McLean: for several years I couldn't fathom why he wasn't
in, or getting serious votes to get in, or even on the eligible ballot
for Downbeat's Hall of Fame. Then he died and someone over at
Downbeat must have wondered the same thing, since they put him
on the ballot and he came from nowhere to win. I'd like to take credit
for that, but I'm sure someone else thinks it was their idea.

Eventually I moved all those notes into a directory
here. But in 2010 I slipped up and
didn't get any second-guess notes together. I don't know whether they
noticed, but in February this year I got an email from Downbeat's
editors asking me to vote in their critics poll. So, what the hell, I
did. Took notes as I was going through the paces. Turned out to be a
huge amount of work, and of a particularly unpleasant sort. Some of
the categories were real clear cut: you say violin, I say Billy Bang;
you say bass, I say William Parker. But some of the categories are so
rich I had a tough time narrowing the field. For instance, some of the
alto saxophonists I didn't vote for: Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill,
John Zorn, Oliver Lake, Bobby Watson, Michael Moore, Marty Ehrlich,
Phil Woods, Sonny Simmons, Steve Wilson, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Steve
Lehman, Ted Nash, Miguel Zenon, Steve Coleman. Trumpet, tenor sax,
bass (after Parker), and drums are all like that, piano even more so.

Then there are categories I don't have anyone for -- flute, organ,
electric bass, electric keyboards -- and categories I don't especially
relate to -- composer, arranger, group. There's also the interest in
blues albums, which I like but don't follow (mostly because there's
not much to follow), and their ridiculous "beyond" category. Also bugs
me that they can't evaluate records on a calendar year basis: voting
in March, we're expected to go April 2010 to March 2011 (although I
think the only 2011 record that got nominated was Joe Lovano's Bird
Songs, from January) -- wiped out my second place album from 2010,
but mostly just made me do a lot of extra checking.

I cast this a couple weeks ago. Thought I'd go back through the
file and clean it up, add an introduction, maybe some final thoughts,
maybe drop some more names in I hadn't thought of at the time. Should
explain a few minor points: for each category, we're asked to vote
for three names, giving the top dog 5 points, second 3, and third 2.
The ballot offers a list of names, so those people you can just pick;
otherwise, there's a slot where you can write names in, noting how
many points for each write-in. In some categories, I felt like I
should stick with the ballot; in others I didn't, and I probably
wound up doing write-ins for 20-30% of my votes. Most categories
you had to vote twice, once for the absolute best, a second time
for a "rising star" -- the definition of the latter was vague at
best. In my notes I spend a lot of time fussing over distinctions
like that, and my strategy evolves a bit along the way. (I couldn't
go back and redo any earlier votes -- or at least I didn't know how
to.)

The other big point is to caution you not to take this too seriously.
I'm pretty comfortable grading records -- which are purchasing decisions,
which is to say economic matters -- much less so people, who are people.
When I say X, I really mean the recorded output of X, usually limited
to the last few years roughly speaking. Even so in many cases there is
no basis for making effective comparisons. Much of the time I just felt
like arbitrarily going one way or another. Also, the ballot definitely
had an effect in steering me, in ways that will be hard to reconstruct
from the notes.

Expert Comments

On Misha Mengelberg, et al.:

I've spent a quite some time over the last 2-3 weeks trying to make
up for my woeful ignorance of Misha Mengelberg. The main thing that
spurred this interest was Benjamin Herman's Hypochristmastreefuzz:
More Mengelberg, which I loved instantly and is a pick hit in the
Jazz CG I'm thrashing on finishing. Also have ICP Orchestra's
049 -- I understand there's an even newer 050 out, but
don't have it. A few things are available on Rhapsody, and a few more
can be streamed in their entirety from
Destination Out -- I'm in the
middle of a 1979 Brotzmann-Mengelberg-Bennink trio right now, 3
Points and a Mountain.

One item I've been sitting on for years is a DVD called
Afijn, a documentary tracing Mengelberg back to his initial
interest in Monk -- includes several clips of Monk playing -- with a
half-dozen "extras" of in-concert footage (some including
carpentry). This reminded me that one Mengelberg disc I do have is a
wonderful 1982 set with Roswell Rudd and Steve Lacy, called
Regeneration -- split between songs by Monk and Herbie Nichols,
it kicked off a minor revival of Nichols' music. It was then followed
by Change of Season, an all-Nichols program with Mengelberg,
Lacy, and George Lewis.

Francis Davis recommended a Mengelberg set called Four in
One with Dave Douglas -- he remember it as all-Monk, but there are
only three Monk pieces, a stretch in the middle surrounded by
Mengelberg originals. He also praised Who's Bridge, a trio I've
heard of but haven't found. Rhapsody does have a more recent piano
trio, Senne Sing Song, which provides a good taste of his piano
work.

I'll be posting more on all of this in the next couple weeks as I
get Jazz CG worked out and Recycled Goods up. A lot of interesting
music here -- including quite a bit of related Brotzmann, which I'm
sure will warm old Joe McCarthy's cold cold heart.

Music: Current count 17959 [17941] rated (+18), 879 [863] unrated (+16).
More weirdness around the neverending closing of this era's Jazz Consumer
Guide column. I've been desperate for distractions, which notably include
the following notes -- picked them up from
Destination Out, which lets
one stream whole albums of some important FMP obscurities.

Willem Breuker Kollektief: Live in Berlin (1975,
FMP): Close to the beginning of what came to be called New Dutch
Swing, Breuker played various saxes and clarinets, his Kollektief
an 11-piece band that played classical, swing, and avant-garde
with uncommon whimsy and an emphasis on the surreal; just how
much whimsy isn't totally clear until they knock off a pop song
("Our Day Will Come"), but even the mock-classical "La Plagiata"
is strung with laughs.
A- [destination-out.com]

Peter Brötzmann: 14 Love Poems (Plus 10 More)
(1984 [2004], FMP): Solo exercises on a range of saxophones and clarinets
including a taste of tarogato, all improv except for a bit of "Lonely
Woman," mostly modest in tone and dynamics although not without the
occasional jarring squelch; anyone serious about Brötzmann might
find this a useful lens, as most of his kit is here, in manageable
portions.
B+(*) [destination-out.com]

Andrew Cyrille/Peter Brötzmann: Andrew Cyrille Meets
Brötzmann in Berlin (1982 [1983], FMP): Duo, with Cyrille
on drums and Brötzmann rotating between tenor sax, baritone sax,
tarogato, and E-flat clarinet. Not sure which of the latter is
responsible for an extended high-pitch barrage, but it's a bit
much to handle. Brötzmann is no less combative on any other horn,
but the others make more sense, and draw Cyrille out more. Won't
make him any new friends, but very impressive as these things go.
B+(***) [destination-out.com]

The Feel Trio [Cecil Taylor/William Parker/Tony Oxley]:
Celebrated Blazons (1990 [1993], FMP): I count 18 records
for Taylor on FMP from 1988-91, an intense outpouring that dominates
the later half of is career; several were Feel Trios, with longtime
bassist Parker shoring up spectacular fireworks from the others -- a
rare record where the drummer gets in even better licks than Taylor.
A- [destination-out.com]

ICP-Tentet: In Berlin (1977 [1979], FMP): Stands for
Instant Composers Pool, the Tentet later renamed Orchestra, still extant
thirty-some years later, still led by pianist Misha Mengelberg and
drummer Han Benink with cellist Tristan Honsinger the only other name
still in the group; the horns are delirious in unison, rooted in old
European pop, but they can also clash violently -- this was, after
all, the group's enfant terrible phase.
B+(**) [destination-out.com]

Peter Kowald/Wadada Leo Smith/Günter Sommer: Touch the Earth --
Break the Shells (1979-81 [1997], FMP): Bass-trumpet-drums trio,
the bassist literally fleshes such out an amazing range of sound he
threatens to reduce the others to accents, but neither reduce easily;
Smith's spare eloquence is typical of him in this period; Sommer has
a rapid roll to his drums, more rolling thunder than random lightning,
but that all leads back to the remarkable bass work.
A- [destination-out.com]

Misha Mengelberg/Han Bennink: Eine Partie Tischtennis
(1974, FMP): Dutch piano-percussion duo, hooked up in the mid-1960s
and have been inseparable ever since; the pianist flirts with boogie
but prefers a sharp attack, especially on the high keys; the drummer
will attack anything, with logs and woodblocks among his more common
victims; too sharp, shrill, and loud to really enjoy, but it does
rivet your attention.
B+(*) [destination-out.com]

Misha Mengelberg/Steve Lacy/George Lewis/Harjen Gorter/Han
Bennink: Change of Season (Music of Herbie Nichols) (1984
[1986], Soul Note): Nichols cut three CDs worth of material for Blue
Note in 1955-56, a bit more or Bethlehem in 1957, then fell out of
sight and died young in 1963. Trombonist Roswell Rudd studied under
Nichols and made a number of efforts at reviving his music, including
Regeneration, an exceptional 1982 album with Steve Lacy, Misha
Mengelberg, Kent Carer, and Han Bennink, which was split with one
side of Nichols' compositions, the other of Thelonious Monk tunes.
This follows up with an all-Nichols program, with Lacy, Mengelberg,
and Bennink returning, George Lewis replacing Rudd at trombone, and
Harjen Gorter instead of Carter at bass. The soprano sax and trombone
contrast strongly while tracing out the contours of the music, while
the Dutch avant-swing section picks the rhythm apart.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Misha Mengelberg/Steve Lacy/George Lewis/Ernst Re˙seger/Han
Bennink: Dutch Masters (1987 [1994], Soul Note): Two Lacy
pieces, two by Mengelberg, two by Thelonious Monk who remains a
mainstay of both leaders; don't understand the spelling of ICP's
longtime cellist's name -- it's Reijseger everywhere else; while
the Dutch provide the oddball swing here, the prime sound masters
are the Americans.
B+(***) [Rhapsody]

Jazz Prospecting (JCG #26)?

I should have finished my Jazz Consumer Guide column this past week,
but, uh, didn't. I may be done late today, or tomorrow; at any rate,
sometime real soon now. At this point, it's mostly a matter of sorting.
And duds: don't have any duds written up. Shouldn't be too difficult
to scan back through the Jazz Prospecting and recall a couple. (Maybe
Arturo O'Farrill, since he took the time to write in and call me an
"ass"?). With a new editor coming in, I'm tempted to just leave them
out. I don't personally feel the need to establish my street cred by
kicking cripples. Running duds may be entertaining -- back when I
wrote longer dud reviews I got more feedback on them than on anything
else -- but it chews up space for honorable mentions, which given the
long-term space crunch are creeping up higher and higher on my rank
list: in the current draft I have ten A- records in the HMs, and no
B+(**), and still have so many HMs the surplus file post is going to
be full of them. If the editors want more words on inferior albums
(or for that matter longer reviews of good albums), get me more
space, more often.

With a couple of minor distractions, I spent the entire week going
back over rated records and turning them into JCG reviews -- or when
that didn't prove inspiring some became surplus notes. As such, I did
virtually no new jazz prospecting this week. So I have damn little I
could show you at this point: one new record I want to spin again,
one old record, some Rhapsody stuff that I mostly listened to for
background, a couple of regrade notes. Could see what else I manage
by the end of the day, but it's just as well I punt and come back
next week with something more substantial. I can at least run the
unpacking, and get that out of the way. Will post Recycled Goods
later this week, when I get Jazz CG wrapped up, and Streamnotes
after that -- neither as close to the front of the month as usual,
but it's like that. Also still have that Downbeat poll
ballot.

Weekend Roundup

Now, liquidationism isn't the only argument the G.O.P. report advances to
support the claim that reducing employment actually creates jobs. It also
invokes the confidence fairy; that is, it suggests that cuts in public
spending will stimulate private spending by raising consumer and business
confidence, leading to economic expansion.

Or maybe "suggests" isn't the right word; "insinuates" may be closer
to the mark. For a funny thing has happened lately to the doctrine of
"expansionary austerity," the notion that cutting government spending,
even in a slump, leads to faster economic growth.
[ . . . ]

Did I mention that in Britain, where the government that took power
last May bought completely into the doctrine of expansionary austerity,
the economy has stalled and business confidence has fallen to a two-year
low? And even the government's new, more pessimistic projections are
based on the assumption that highly indebted British households will
take on even more debt in the years ahead.

But never mind the lessons of history, or events unfolding across the
Atlantic: Republicans are now fully committed to the doctrine that we
must destroy employment in order to save it.

And Democrats are offering little pushback. The White House, in
particular, has effectively surrendered in the war of ideas; it no
longer even tries to make the case against sharp spending cuts in the
face of high unemployment.

So that's the state of policy debate in the world's greatest nation:
one party has embraced 80-year-old economic fallacies, while the other
has lost the will to fight. And American families will pay the price.

Speaking of losing the "war of ideas," the Democrats have completely
surrendered to the argument that tax increases would be anti-expansionary,
despite: (a) that the Republicans' argument here is hypocritical, in that
it concedes that government deficit spending does expand the economy;
(b) whatever anti-expansionary drag higher taxes does have can easily be
remedied with more short-term government spending; (c) the taxes would
mostly come from the rich, who are neither spending nor investing now,
so that money would be put to better use, now; and (d) higher tax rates
would balance long-term budgets once the economy recovered, with all the
confidence-building virtues that implies (assuming you believe in such
things). It would also help break the hang-dog psychology of thinking
that we can't afford all sorts of things that this formerly "can do"
country has been able to afford for generations, like education.

Michael Lind: The Failure of Shareholder Capitalism:
Lind claims the "Thatcher-Reagan-Blair-Clinton model of capitalism
is a failure." It's not clear where he gets that. The model has been
remarkably successful at transfering wealth to the already rich, and
there is little reason to think that they won't be able to find more
spoils, even if the easy pickings are over. Still, it's good to note
that there is another model of capitalism which has most of the
benefits of capitalism without being so rapacious.

Shareholder capitalism is the doctrine that companies exist solely to
make money for their shareholders. It is frequently contrasted with
stakeholder capitalism, which holds that companies exist for the benefit
of their customers, workers and communities, not just for ever-fluctuating
number of mostly remote and unengaged passive investors who just happen
to own stock in them, often without even being aware that they do.

This is actually a huge subject, which Lind only barely touches on.
One example Lind comes up with:

America's most dysfunctional industries have the best-paid CEOs. The U.S.
spends twice as much on healthcare as other developed nations, with no
better results, and the runaway cost of medicine in the U.S. is the biggest
threat to the economy in the long run. And yet a Wall Street Journal CEO
compensation study in 2010 found that healthcare CEOs did much better than
their equivalents in more productive industries like energy, telecom and
consumer goods.

The disproportion between the compensation of American financiers and
their foreign equivalents is even more grotesque. In 2008 Jamie Dimon, the
CEO of JP Morgan Chase, the world's fourth largest bank, was paid $19.6
million. Jiang Jianqin, the head of the world's largest bank, the Industrial
and Commercial Bank of China, earned $234,000 -- 2 percent of Jamie Dimon's
compensation.

You might think that exorbitant CEO pay would eventually be seen as a
cost to shareholders, but the prevailing theory seems to be to cut the CEO
in on the shareholders' looting of companies, since they couldn't really
do it without management support. On the other hand, there's nothing in
economics that justifies the shareholder focus. There might be if, say,
capital was so hard to come by that companies had to pay dear for it.
But the fact seems to be that there is so much capital chasing business
opportunities that most of it winds up in speculation. Government could
route money to productive concerns much more efficiently than out banking
system -- indeed, that seems to be pretty much what the Chinese banks do,
which explains why their CEOs are paid like functionaries instead of as
pirates. Capital's exorbitant returns are solely the result of political
influence, and the shareholder ideology is just a way of rationalizing
the political dominance of the ultrarich.

It's hard to overstate how much Republican energy is invested in bringing
the uteruses of America under right-wing control. The House went into an
anti-choice frenzy upon being sworn in in January, passing two bills that
would eliminate private insurance funding for abortion, one that would
dramatically cut funding for international family planning, and the Pence
Amendment, which would ban Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal
funding. And in case the Pence Amendment doesn't work, the House also
zeroed out all funding for Title X, which subsidizes reproductive
healthcare for low-income patients, in the continuing resolution that
funds the federal budget.

For the right, rolling back reproductive rights is considered a worthy
goal in its own right, but since the issue could also provoke a budget
showdown that could result in a government shutdown, it's also a useful
tool in their effort to force Democrats to blink. As with their push to
bust unions at the state level, Republicans stand to gain electorally
by wreaking havoc on the pro-choice movement and undermining its ability
to get out the vote for Democrats.

On the state level, an unprecedented number of anti-choice bills are
being introduced in response to the perceived anti-choice bent of the
Supreme Court. Florida alone has introduced 18 separate anti-choice bills.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has declared mandatory ultrasounds for abortion
patients an emergency priority, and fast-tracked it through the Legislature.
Three separate states have introduced bills that could legalize domestic
terrorism against abortion providers, though a bill in South Dakota was
withdrawn under pressure. Instead, that state's Legislature moved on to
pass the most draconian abortion law in the country, one that would require
a woman to wait 72 hours for an abortion and listen to a lecture from an
anti-choice activist before having an abortion. These examples represent
just a tiny fraction of the anti-choice bills percolating through state
legislatures.

Expert Comments

On rumors of a new Downloader's Diary:

I do virtually all of my work in my website area, so there's always
stuff in flux somewhere. I generally sync up my private and public
websites once a week, sometimes more often if I have a cluster of
things needed to support a blog post -- as happens when I do a
Recycled Goods or Downloader's Diary post (as happened last night). I
don't generally mind that this exposes unfinished stuff, but you
should beware that it's still in a working draft stage. It's pretty
easy right now to find an April 2011 Recycled Goods draft, but I can
assure you that when I do post it it will be significantly
different. It's also possible to find what I have queued up for
Rhapsody Streamnotes, but that's a lot more obscure. Downloader's
Diary is different in that I'm working with another writer who needs
to see what I do to his stuff before it is released. The easiest way
to do that has been to poke the updated file to where it will wind
up. I'm less bothered that stanpnepa found and looked at the file --
actually we're all flattered that anyone would go to that trouble --
than that he announced that it was "up," implying that it was on the
blog, that all the archival links and artwork were in place, and all
that. Problem there is that it led to confusion, since it wasn't
really up. Not sure what the answer is, but I figure some
understanding won't hurt.

A Downloader's Diary (9): April 2011

This is the ninth installment, monthly since August 2010, totalling
231 albums. All columns are indexed and archived
here. You can follow A Downloader's
Diary on
Facebook.

Expert Comments

On the reviewed records:

Sonny Rollins is notorious for refusing to listen to his own tapes,
which is why very little of his vast trove of live tapes is likely to
appear before he dies. I feel some of that pain and confusion in
Road Shows Vol. 1, although I seem to be the only one. The
record swept the Voice's Jazz Critics Poll by a huge
margin. Francis Davis accounted for those who didn't vote for it as
most likely feeling that Rollins was unfair
competition. Downbeat and Jazz Times pushed it into a
"historical" category where it also won handily. I wrote a short Jazz
CG review of it, giving it a friendly A-, which I guess makes me one
of the album's few consensus-breaking detractors. Just played it
again, and I still don't see how any album with a Clifton Anderson
solo can be an A+. Rollins, of course, is great, except by his own
standards, which I think peaked with Plays G-Man (another live
album, from 1986).

I should replay the Vanguard set when I get out from under this
Jazz CG. The first Rollins I ever owned was the 2-LP More From the
Village Vanguard, which I scarcely recall. Then in 1987 it was
(mostly) all dumped onto CD as two separate volumes, which I dutifully
bought, and hated -- a lot of bebop rubbed me the wrong way, and this
was raw and extreme (no piano, no trumpet, basically no
harmony). Still, I gave it another chance when the RVG 2-CD edition
came out in 1999, and felt better about it. Good chance if I played it
again now I'd like it more, but no guarantee. It does have a huge
reputation, including a Penguin Crown (as does Saxophone
Colossus), and such reputations are usually based on something
solid. I just don't know what it is in this case. I will say that
however radical Rollins is here, he was still working inside bebop
with little or no regard to the emerging avant-garde. In the 1960s
Rollins did dabble in avant-garde ideas -- cf. East Broadway
Rundown from 1966, another record I don't particularly like but
may be worth another shot -- but he abandoned them rather
quickly. (The second Vandermark 5 Free Jazz Classics tries to
make a case for Rollins and Kirk as free jazzmen; not entirely
convincing, but a very enjoyable set.)

And again:

Thrashing a bit here: in the time it takes to write even a short
note the world can change under your feet. It didn't take many plays
for me to Jazz CG Road Shows, because it all seemed pretty
obvious from the start. So it's possible that had I given it more time
in more contexts I might have psyched myself into liking it better,
but that's true of lots of records, and you have to pick and choose
where you want to put the time. By the time I finally wrote my capsule
on Billy Bang's Prayer for Peace last year I had played it more
than 20 times and it wound up my record of the year. Had I written
sooner it certainly wouldn't have: at first I thought it was a good
but very typical Bang record, and there are lots of those. Then
something happened and it grew on me.

I'm not knocking these picks; just trying to add a little different
perspective, since I'm sort of the odd man out here.

On Ken Burns: Rollins got one mention in the whole series, a little
two-minute spotlight in the last episode as they were mopping up the
set. One of the most glaring shortfalls in a series that was full of
them. I wonder if they would have even included that much but for the
record company tie-in.

On Clifton Anderson: He's Rollins' nephew, and he's no doubt a
handy guy for Rollins to have around. The last decade has managed to
drive my opinion on nepotism to new lows, but that's rather minor
here. His own records are blah -- at least the few I've heard. And
trombone is one of my favorite instruments, something I've followed
pretty closely from Kid Ory and Miff Mole to the present day. I tuned
right in to Anderson's solo, wondering what's this doing here.

By the way, if you want to hear Rollins with a real trombonist, dig
up the early J.J. Johnson Blue Notes (The Eminent J.J. Johnson,
especially Vol. 1). Very early, still in his teens, already
amazing.